


Freedom's Just Another Word

by pronker



Category: Penguins of Madagascar
Genre: Blindness, Camaraderie, Claustrophobia, Complete, Depression, Imprisonment, M/M, Slow Burn, Team Feels, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 22,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28817298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pronker/pseuds/pronker
Summary: Manfredi and Johnson: The Lost Years. An Alt fate for the pair of commando penguins.
Relationships: Johnson & Manfredi (Madagascar)
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

Title: Freedom's Just Another Word

Author: pronker

Summary: Manfredi and Johnson: The Lost Years. An Alt fate for the pair of MIA commando penguins.

A/N Originally published on lunaescenceDAHTKAHM only, which is undergoing revamping. Wish them luck! The intention is to publish a chapter daily. Wish me luck!

IOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIOIO 

DAY 1

"I hate this gulag already, Manfredi."

"You got that right, Johnson."

"You think Skipper got away?"

"Dunno. Dunno."

"Too bad the guys were all moulting and got invalided out of this mission."

"Well, that sucked donkey balls, but they couldn't have swam along in their bald state, now could they?"

"No, you're right. Two miles through the underground conduit would have given them the gollywobbles followed by nasty cases of la grippe."

"You always see the dark side of life, Johnson. Perk up, why doncha."

Manfredi couldn’t see life of any sort. Blackest black choked off all light and it occurred to him that darkness was the absence of light and not its opposite because opposite implied an equal thing to the first thing, like somebody could have a _choice_. There was no relief from darkness, even when he closed his eyes and patterns cha-cha-cha'd across his eyelids.

He could hear, though. Johnson moved in the darkness, scraping his flipper across the smooth stone wall. There was a door made from a material that was something other than wood. If it were wood, the two of them could have pecked and scratched to show their captors that they had not given up and never would give up trying to escape. That was important, somehow.

“Why do you suppose we got put down here?” Manfredi said quietly. They hadn’t spoken much beyond confirming their stories – Johnson ganged up on in battle while Manfredi succumbed to knock out gas. Then followed a disorienting sense of time lost and distance covered to who knew where. He felt urpy from the gas and he supposed that Johnson nursed bumps and bruises.

"'Cause they're mean. What more reason do you need?" Snarkity-snark-snark, thought Manfredi. He didn't need visual cues to read Johnson because after so many years soldiering together he could read him like a book, if penguins could read.

Manfredi nodded out of habit. “I would think the Big Bad would want us croaked.”

"Croaked? _Ja_ , baby." Johnson turned to pace counterclockwise in their confined space and even if they moved in air and not water, the currents shifted so that Manfredi felt the switch. This would drive him crazy if he didn't watch it.

Manfredi sat down against a wall and briefly buried his face in his flippers. He smoothed the feathers that stood up every whichaway so that he didn't look like Rico, not that he disapproved of Rico's mohawk. It was important to have an individual look, just like Kowalski quoted Dr. Pill saying all the time. Hooboy, what an egghead Kowalski was, but a good egg just the same.

He could hear Johnson waddling, investigating every square inch of the cell. Manfredi had arrived first to discover four walls, a slightly uneven floor and a few rocks he had tripped over.

“Why in pitch black?” Manfredi asked suddenly.

Johnson said nothing for a moment. “It's torture, man, don't fool yourself.”

Manfredi turned in the direction of his voice. “Then he’s a fool to think we'd give in to it. Ages before we passed muster for Skipper's team, we had torture resistance training. Remember Dar-es-Salaam? Piece of cake to suffer through sensory deprivation like that, am I right or am I right?”

“I hope so,” Johnson said, an edge of uncertainty to his voice like a rusty Bowie knife.

After a few hours – or what Manfredi guessed were a few hours – Johnson finally sat down. He sat near Manfredi, but not touching; Manfredi could hear his breathing. The steady inhale-exhale slowed as time went on, and Manfredi wondered if he were sleeping. Generally, the combination of a horizontal position and nothing to do sent Johnson to dreamville within minutes.

They waited for something to happen as time dragged on, staring out into the darkness as if they would at some point see something.


	2. Chapter 2

DAY 1.5

When the noise came, Johnson was dozing. He immediately leapt to his feet, scrambling in the direction of the sound. It was harsh, a stretched out squeal. His flippers blindly smacked into the door and he searched the area quickly, skimming the smooth surface. He tried to reach around the box being forced through the door, but he encountered vertical lines of something hard a flipper's width apart. They felt like piano wire that could slice and dice as well as produce music.

The box fell to the floor with a harsh clang as Johnson tried to get to where the box had gone through, but the space was gone. There were only the hard lines that never would make music.

“Johnson?”

“We have a box,” Johnson stated. He picked it up cautiously, sensing its dimensions, feeling the hinge and handle as Manfredi approached. His fellow inmate's breathing grew louder as strong flippers bumped his and then withdrew.

Johnson found a latch. “I think I can open it.”

“What are you waiting for?” Manfredi said, a hint of amusement in his voice.

Johnson flicked the latch and slowly started to open it. The box opened exactly in the middle and since it had fallen, it was hard to tell which way was up. Shrugging mentally, he opened it. He felt liquid hit him and he jerked in surprise. A thing that rang like a bell fell out to the floor, water splashing everywhere as its unmistakable scent flooded his soul. Another item hit the floor, sounding crunchy.

“What was that?” Manfredi asked, alarm turning his voice shrill.

“Something wet,” Johnson said, telling his heart to slow down. Another brush as Manfredi stepped close to pat him timidly and then Manfredi backed up, and he totally shouldn't, because survival. "Come here and suck me, Manfredi."

"Eh? I don't do --- we've never --- "

"My flippers, idjit! They are wet and this might be all the water we get for a long time. Suck me right this second." Johnson thrust where he thought Manfredi was and the unseen beak closed around him.

Johnson stuck his other flipper onto his own tongue, pushing away the sensation of Manfredi's nimble licks swirling round and round on nerves made raw by shared danger. Two minutes passed.

"All gone, Johnson."

"Yeh, it wasn't much but it was something, you know?"

"A drib drabbley drip. All right, now what?"

Johnson reached out a toe and crinkled something like a wrapper. Two somethings, he amended as he picked them up. "These feel like MREs.”

“Let me see,” Manfredi requested. “Or feel,” he added.

Johnson passed him one. The rest of the box was empty.

There was a crackling sound, and he heard Manfredi bite down. “Yuck,” he said. “Definitely a MRE. All the nutrients a penguin would ever need in one crummy bar and nasty as lutfisk. Hard to forget.”

“Dayyum, the other container wasn't even hippie coconut water, just plain old water,” Johnson observed, hefting his own MRE. "I could go for some ripe lutfisk about now. It's to me like lasagna is to you, soul food, you know?"

There was a moment of silence, then, “Yes,” Manfredi agreed. “I keep forgetting you can’t see me nod,” he admitted with the touchy-feeliness that he showed to Johnson now and then even when they were sober.

“I know, _bror_ , I keep doing the same thing,” Johnson assured him, and he felt him relax slightly in the air currents that fed him information whether he wanted them to or not. Manfredi displayed more tender feelings than Johnson ever did; Skipper had called Manfredi _cute_ in an unironic way. He hoped they had a chance to know Skipper better and the rest of the team, too. He felt robbed of more than a casual acquaintance and he hated feeling robbed. 

Hatred always came more easily to him than to Manfredi, well that was just how things stood. If they were to be without officer guidance for a spell, then Johnson would need to step up to the plate keeping Manfredi on an even keel. Their ranks matched ever since they got busted, but their personalities and talents matched not at all. _Dritt_ , that bust still burned after three months. Stupid Central Command. Stupid middle management types that couldn't tell an outstanding tactic worth trying under battle pressure like the two of them did from one that cost lives ---  
“Do you think we’ll get three squares a day?” Manfredi asked and returned Johnson to the here and now.

Neither of them were eating. “I don’t know,” Johnson said. "One MRE is enough for one day. What I'm wondering is what work we'll have to do since a gulag is a work camp. I got a delicate system, you remember. Work stresses me out.”

"Yeah, you're right. A gulag makes us animals work at --- at --- I dunno what. What do you think the two of us could work at? Drilling new recruits, naw not that. I'll bet it's something neither me or you has done so we'll have to learn it quick, palio."

Johnson put on his reasonable voice. "Leave us consider one thing at a time, Manfredi. Getting chow trumps whatever work we'll need to learn, but hey, survival comes first, and I spilled our water. Sorry about that. It's on me. You can drill me for my blood if it comes to it. 'Sokay by me to eat me, too."

"Aw, no big deal about the water and your meat would choke me to death, you tough old bird, so nix on anybody eating anybody." Manfredi made a sound like he did right before they ended a bender and Johnson backed up because if Manfredi were going to blow chunks, he turned into a volcano and it wasn't pretty. "That's nausorating to think about, Johnson."

"You always was a wimp."

"Says you?"

"Says me."

The familiar back and forth gave him strength beyond all reason as the blackness only reinforced years upon years of camaraderie.

“That water may be our last for a while, then,” Manfredi said.

Johnson winced. “I’ll have to catch the box next time so I don't let either of us down like, well, you know.” He fell into brooding.

Another short silence. “Yes. Or I’ll have to catch it. Do you reckon we should put the box back so who or whatever filled it can refill it? We need to be smart about this, Johnson, not like we were during The Incident.”

Johnson snorted at Manfredi knowing him so well to guess at what he was brooding over. "I’ll put the box near the door this time so it'll be easy for the whatever to fill it up next time.”

There was a faint feathery noise like Manfredi was shrugging. “If there is a next time,” Manfredi said uneasily.

“Point taken,” Johnson muttered, then spoke more clearly. “We should probably eat these.” He waved the MRE, even knowing Manfredi couldn’t see it.

“I wanna wait until I’m starved enough to want it,” Manfredi said.

And there it was, feelings over facts. “If you do,” Johnson pointed out, “you'll upchuck it from not having food for so long. Besides, we oughta build our strength.” He paused. “If you don’t think about it, the taste ain’t so bad.”

"You're better with not thinking than I am, Johnson."

"Shut up and eat."

They ate while conversing about possibilities. What did the Big Bad want them for? Before being heaved into the cell, both had met individually with the turd. He hadn’t said a lot, just mentioned something about future use of them and then they were blindfolded. What the Big Bad had said to each of them hadn’t differed much and was largely vague. Both had seen the triumph in his eyes. There had been no sight, smell, or mention of Skipper.

Johnson had heard the anger in Manfredi’s voice as he told him the story of his capture. He shared the feeling but more privately and on a more controlled basis.

Nothing new happened for hours, and eventually, Johnson and Manfredi quieted. They lay down close to each other but not touching, uncomfortable on the hard floor because it had been some time since they bivouacked. They eventually slept with no dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

DAY 2

“I don’t think we’re going to get more food unless we put everything back,” Manfredi admitted. He sat in the middle, middle-ish, anyway, of the floor. Johnson was walking in a loose circuit, an absentminded pacing. _Mannaggia la miseria,_ was he trying to figure out where they were with penguin location sensing? Well, let him. He had always been better at it than Manfredi himself was. It gave him something to do. Kowalski floated his theory to them all one night after lights out about how penguins felt magnets inside the earth or some such nonsense. Did the how or the why matter, as long as the what kept working? 

“You’re probably right.” Johnson’s voice floated over to him, seeming to come from everywhere. It was still odd, how everything was changed because there was nothing to see. Manfredi was having difficulty orienting himself. The black seemed never-ending even though he knew it wasn’t. It felt like taking a step was waddling off into an abyss. Johnson, he noted, didn’t appear to have the problem and it wasn’t fair, he thought grumpily.

“I guess that rules out digging our way out with the water cup,” Manfredi said lightly, trying to cheer himself up. He considered himself a strong penguin, but the darkness was wearing.

A few _pat-pat_ penguin steps and then a firm grip squeezed Manfredi’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” Johnson said softly. “I can teach you a few mental tricks to GPS yourself, if you want.”

Manfredi nodded, then said, “You aced that in training, yeh. Thank you.”

He heard Johnson rise. “Besides,” Johnson said, “I think the water cup would chip before these walls.” There was a twist to his tone, a note of his usual understated humor.

Manfredi smiled, but didn’t say anything. Johnson would probably pick up on his reaction anyway. That's what soldiering together for donkey's years did to you.

After a few moments, he heard Johnson fumbling something – it took him a moment, but he realized he was putting the wrappers and the water cup in the box, then putting the box up against the door. It wouldn’t accept the box without those things, and they wouldn’t get a new box until the old one was retrieved. No new box, no food or water. They had to think positively that this was the way to go.

They had also discovered a hole in one of the far corners. It wasn’t very deep, only a foot or so, and at the bottom they could feel more hard strings like with the door. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was for.

“What do you think Skipper is doing?” Manfredi asked suddenly. “I wonder if he knows we’re down here.”

“I doubt it,” Johnson grunted. “He’s not the type to not act.”

Manfredi laughed. “That can be a good thing.”

“Yes,” Johnson said softly, almost affectionately. “And a bad thing.” He paused. “I suspect the Big Bad's base got flipped ass over teakettle out there. I don't know where we are, though, 'cause everything got fuzzy and there's this whackadoo feels in my gut that we're not jailed at the base but somewheres else. This bugs me no end, Manfredi.”

Manfredi traced the side of his face all the way out to his beaktip. It was a restless movement he had taken up in the past few days. He couldn't figure out how to answer Johnson's muted disclosure of his concerns so he didn't try. It was easier to return to discussing Skipper. “It's, it's possible he's killing.”

Johnson didn’t answer.

“He wouldn't have meant to, you know, but _anything for my team_ , like me and you've heard him say,” Manfredi whispered. Skipper, Skipper, Skipper. He couldn’t help but think of him here, and he couldn’t stay silent. The boredom was eating away at him and he knew it. So he thought. He contemplated Skipper, his own bust in rank, his dreams broken and unbroken, team politics, the new assignment to Central Park Zoo they'd just adjusted to, the five or six lovers who stood out from the rest in memory, and life in general. It was better than the alternative.

“I think he could, _bror_ ,” Johnson said at last and Manfredi was struck by how somber his voice was. “Mean to kill, that is. I don’t think he could know where it might lead him. He would never earn the Endless Iceberg. Godmother Death would pitch him _down_ , um, to you know where, and, and not _out_ to swim the Eternally Foggy Sea.”

“He mightn’t see clearly enough,” Manfredi whispered and then spoke as he came on from strength. "Hey now, we're thinking about dying. This is not going to be our end, croaking down here like rats in a _basciament_."

Johnson's voice rose. "So why mention it, Manfredi, huh? If you ain't thinking about it, huh? Answer me that."

Manfredi's beak worked and he punched the air, not wanting to hit Johnson but not not wanting to, either. _"Dai, sbrigati, ti straccerò,_ you _rævhål._ "

"You take that back!"

"Not in this lifetime!"

Adrenaline burned its way through Manfredi as it had not since he had tried to fight off the knockout gas. He wheezed and stomped his feet like a toddler. Then the blackness soothed rather than depressed and he calmed to a simmering tremble.

"Sorry, Johnson. Sorry."

There was a rustle, and the sound and smell of Johnson as he approached made Manfredi tense up just in case of attack. Then he felt Johnson's pat on his shaking back. They were always so careful about touching each other, here. “I’m sorry, too.” Johnson inhaled sharply enough to whistle. “Manfredi, if, or, okay, when Skipper comes, you have to remember something.”

"That he loves soan papdi?" The whimsy fell flat as Johnson continued, sober as a judge.

“No, I'm serious – ”

"Like you're not ever otherwise."

“He might not be the penguin we knew, Manfredi. Would Skipper murder?” Johnson demanded before becoming conciliatory, softer. “He would be gone. We'd have to bring him in for justice.”

“No, he’s not like that,” Manfredi said defiantly, but he didn’t move. “Just would be lost. He’d be lost. He’d realize and, and he’d remember.”

“You know I would like to believe that, but he would have made his choice. Even if he was able to turn back, he would never be the same. You couldn't ever have again what trust you had with him, and I couldn't, neither. Manfredi, I’m not trying to hurt you. But you’re trying to hold onto a ideal that is gone up in smoke.”

Manfredi sighed, making himself relax. “I know. Things, er, time cannot go backwards.” He reached out for Johnson, finding one of his flippers and taking it in his. “I know. But he’d still be Skipper.” He felt upwards, touching Johnson's face. Johnson started, but allowed it. “It’s appropriate to, to have a bull session over what our commander would or wouldn't do. We don't have input other than the past. We’re so blind here,” he whispered.

Johnson twitched. “Yes."


	4. Chapter 4

DAY 30

The food and drink came the next day and the next and more after that. After the first three times, they stopped trying to predict the squeal's timing, but they considered plans using the few rocks incarcerated with them to block the closing of the door slit after the box slid through. The problem was that the slit was slimmer than they were and the slicey dicey wires seemed tougher than they could cut with even their best karate moves. It was disheartening because it made them feel like cowards for not risking their food and drink allotment in the cause of escape.

They would stare out for hours. Johnson knew Manfredi did it, just like he did. There was nothing to see, yet they persisted, unable to help themselves. If he stared long enough, Johnson would begin to see things in the darkness – things in his own mind. Eyes open or closed, it was all in his mind. It was like dreaming while awake, struggling to come out of it, even though there was nothing to struggle for.

The nothingness of the dark was bad, but Johnson felt the silence was worse. There was no life other than themselves, wherever they were. Johnson was so used to there being something.

Even on long missions, there were other companions – friends on his D list who he might promote to C, acquaintances who might become friends, COs good and bad and outstanding. Off missions, there were the ladies to play with, love, and leave.

He had never been alone for so long. Now and then he would wonder if Manfredi were really there with him. Touching him made it so, but was he imagining the touch?

The darkness danced, and Johnson closed his eyes.

“How long do you think it’s been?” Johnson asked, wandering the perimeter of the cell.

“Three hours.” Manfredi’s response came without hesitation, but it was doubtful he was confident of it. It was a thing they did, one of them asking how long it had been, the other answering.

Every twenty-four hours, they would say a day had passed. They talked sporadically with long periods of silence. Mostly, they thought, the memories gone over so many times they seemed altered by the remembrance.

Johnson continued on his mindless circuit. He could feel nothing beyond the cell walls because the earth was silent. So he walked, restlessly pacing the edges of the cell, stubbornly trying to sense something, anything to tell their location. And again and again there was nothing.

Johnson shivered, pausing, and then started walking again, struggling to ignore the sounds of Manfredi’s hitched breaths and strangled whimpers to give him some privacy.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Some days later, Johnson finally grew tired of it. “If you would stay awake for a few hours – exercise or something – and then sleep, you’d be better off,” he counseled Manfredi.

Manfredi sat up. He had been trying to sleep, and his efforts were keeping Johnson awake. He would thrash around and then pause, fully waking. Johnson had heard him go through the cycle a dozen times now. He almost asked what was bothering him, but it felt too personal a question. Manfredi was a pal, and you didn't ask some questions of a pal, even if you had known him for a longer time in your life than you hadn't known him.

“I’ll deal with it, Johnson,” Manfredi said coldly.

“Fine.”

IOIOIOIOIO 

“Three plus four makes seven plus six makes eleven makes twenty-four ...” A pause. Johnson blocked his earholes, but it didn’t block the sound of Manfredi’s voice. “Twenty-nine plus one makes thirty makes a month. Three hours plus twenty-nine days plus one day makes one month, three hours.”

“Seven plus six makes thirteen and they aren’t coming!” Johnson finally snapped, his voice breaking. “We’re alone.”

“No. No. Three hours plus twenty-nine days plus one day plus one month – ” Manfredi’s voice was flat, without inflection.

“No! Three hours plus twenty-nine days plus one day makes one month ...” Johnson trailed off. “They aren’t coming. I can’t sense anything and it's a thing I'm good at. It’s all nothing.”

“Shut up, Johnson. How do you know? Maybe they’re just, just leaving us down here for a few months. Then they’ll be back.” Manfredi's voice rose at the end, becoming high-pitched.

How did he know? He felt it. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt it in the nothingness. Despair sang in his mind, yes, but there was something beyond that. They were alone; he felt their aloneness in its entirety, like they did not exist. The darkness hid everything. Didn’t Manfredi realize that yet? It hid everything. They were gone.

Had it been a month? Was he cracking after merely a month? It was so hard to tell. They slept, and they didn’t know how long they slept. Johnson kept track at first, but it became harder and harder. There was no comparison; there was just the endless span of time and the unchanging dark. He couldn’t keep track anymore.

They had to stay sane. Johnson knew that. Being down here was psychological torture. For Manfredi, for the never-ending darkness, for him in that he could sense nothing about their location.

When Manfredi spoke again, he spoke along with him: “Three hours plus twenty-nine days plus one day makes one month ...”


	5. Chapter 5

DAY 104

“He isn’t coming.” Manfredi seemed almost calm, sitting totally still; Johnson couldn’t hear him moving. But despite that, his voice was high and cracking.

“You don’t know that,” Johnson whispered. He was waddling back and forth. “We don’t know what’s happening out there.” Out there. Vague and mysterious and unknown. But couldn’t he believe there was hope out there, too, if he knew nothing? He had been the first one to believe they had been left here to die. Stagnant. He hadn’t said it, not directly, but Manfredi had heard anyway, in his words of Skipper.

And now, Manfredi sounded convinced they would be left here forever with only an unknown minion supplying them with food and water, until or unless that ran out.

“It’s been three months,” Manfredi pointed out rationally as Johnson knew he sometimes could. Three months of long silences, of restless exercising – mostly on Johnson’s part – and the two of them hardly having anything to do with each other, except for the occasional, fearing touch. Fear that the other penguin was disappearing.

“We think,” Johnson said softly. “Doesn’t time drag on when you aren’t in a good situation? It could be less than three months.”

Manfredi was starting to breathe faster. There was an odd noise, too. Johnson stopped walking and cocked his head, listening. It was sort of slithery and squooshy, yet staccato. Unable to identify it, Johnson reached out with all his mind's strength to what hadn't worked since their incarceration but it wasn't their penguin direction perception that informed him of danger: it was his own dread that Manfredi did what he himself had considered.

“Manfredi? Manfredi, what are you doing?” Alarmed, Johnson stepped over to Manfredi, nearly treading on him. Manfredi scrambled back, but Johnson grabbed him. His right flipper – it was slick, and very warm. Slick and warm – “Manfredi!” He yanked Manfredi's flippers away from himself and sat by him, forcibly bringing him to his chest.

“Stop!” Manfredi cried.

“You pecked your own body, Manfredi,” Johnson said hoarsely. “You’re trying to kill yourself! I can smell your blood.” He felt nauseous. Why hadn’t he guessed this? He’d kept his distance from Manfredi because he thought he needed it, needed that privacy; had he only been separating him, making him alone?

Manfredi sniffled. “Let me go, Johnson,” he said into Johnson's chest, his voice thick with unshed tears.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re pissed off. You want to punish Skipper for not rescuing us. You want him,” Johnson said slowly and deliberately, “to find your dead body so he’ll suffer.”

“No, I don’t!” Manfredi snarled.

Johnson found Manfredi’s self-induced wound and pressed hard. It didn’t seem to be bleeding that fast, so he hadn’t plumbed the artery. “Liar,” he hissed.

Manfredi tried to yank out of his grasp.

Johnson softened his voice. “I’m here, Manfredi.”

Manfredi didn’t answer, but Johnson could tell he was listening.

“I’m not going through this on my own and neither are you. From now on,” Johnson whispered. They had to stay sane. They had to stay together to do that, didn’t they? Not have distance, not create distance. “What does killing yourself accomplish, Manfredi?”

Manfredi stilled. Johnson felt his nod. Not a verbal response, not even a total agreement, and even less of one since they knew the other couldn’t see nods. Manfredi knew that.

“I hate the darkness,” Manfredi whispered. “It’s nothing. Who would think nothing could be so terrible?”

“I know,” Johnson said into matted and dirty feathers. Unable to properly wash, they both yearned for the ocean or even a stinking runoff slough, Manfredi refusing to preen himself or allow Johnson to do it.

Manfredi stopped fighting him. “It was stupid.”

This time, Johnson didn’t answer. Nothing was to be gained. Manfredi was not naturally depressed or normally suicidal. He would be okay. Johnson would be with him so that he would be okay, and that would have to be enough.

He would be here. Not present; _here_. He pressed harder and waited for the trickle of blood to stop.


	6. Chapter 6

DAY 216

“We can’t keep doing this.” Manfredi’s voice was whispery soft, that kind of soft where it seems not a product of voice, but of breath. But he knew Johnson would hear. Along with the darkness, the silence was draining. Manfredi found himself constantly searching for the noise of Johnson breathing. Sometimes he would get so quiet that he would poke him, just to hear him breathe. He had a feeling he amused him when he did that.

“Doing what?” Johnson’s voice was loud, compared to the quiet of his breathing.

“We’re not surviving, we’re existing,” Manfredi snapped. They talked; they counted the days; they speculated. They didn’t talk about Skipper, about the failed mission, about the new transfer to Central Park Zoo. After the first few days, those became forbidden topics by default. Thinking of those things was both disheartening and energizing, but the energy had nowhere to go, and the sadness had nothing to dispel it.

“Maybe existing is easier.” It was a response uncharacteristic of a commando.

Manfredi walked over to him; four steps one two three four. He knelt and grabbed Johnson's face rougher than he meant to. “You’re breaking,” Manfredi said softly. It was amazing to him what little things could do to his own mood. A mere thought could bring him to tears, when before it had been fact, life, a memory or a token of a memory. The present and past seemed much more wispy.

“’Oh, that I could live without hope',” Johnson's voice rasped.

Manfredi ran his flippers over Johnson's eyes, and they were wet. “A quote from a classic television show? Is it from F Troop when Trooper Duffy went on and on about his guilt from surviving the Alamo?”

“Even I have wimpy moments,” Johnson pointed out. He sighed, sniffled and then his tone returned to what Manfredi never wanted to hear change. He still sounded congested, though, and they had no sick call to rely on. “What do you suggest we oughta do? I never went through POW preparation like this.”

“Well, obviously I didn’t, either,” Manfredi said. “We need a routine and something fun to do.”

Johnson paused. “Does this great wisdom come from comic books, by any chance?” There was a new lightness to his voice.

Manfredi laughed. “Yes. At least the writers do their research, well, sometimes, and the artistic types draw it.” We’re going to live, he thought. “We can do this.”

Johnson reached out and touched Manfredi’s face, lightly skimming along his jaw line. The contact was surprisingly comforting; it felt so real. “Yes, we can.”

Manfredi took Johnson's flippers in his, and they stayed that way for a long time.

IOIOIOIOIO 

It weighed very heavily at times, thick and cloying. The darkness would press in on them again, they would let their minds wander. Of course, Manfredi didn’t see or hear any of this directly, but he nevertheless knew it was the case. There was something to be said for the existence of instinct; it was clear, here, that something spooky was at work at times. He wondered if it were Mama Nature making it up to him for her poor gift in sensing location by Kowalski's screwball notion of magnets. 

It didn’t really matter; the fact of it was enough. Whatever instinct the powers that be instilled in penguins to make them want to go on living, he and Johnson had it.

They spoke sparingly, but they both made an effort. They talked about random little things, past experiences and animals they knew. Sometimes they even told jokes. Johnson only got some of his, and he got only some of Johnson's. The one about penguins on KP duty and the number of eyes in the room simply didn’t make sense to him, even when Johnson explained that they were potato eyes.

From what he remembered, Johnson was sitting about four steps away. Every time he moved, every scootch he took, Manfredi would adjust his mental map of where the two of them were in relation to each other and the walls. It was something Johnson had taught him to do. It had been surprisingly easy to learn, once Johnson had connected it for him to organization politics like on Total Drama Island – keeping track of who was where, the alliances forged and broken. When they talked politics in real life, Johnson taught him to overlay the image of any political group with colors: blood red for their own team, puce for the Big Boss and her cronies, butter yellow for the humans, and brown for other units they had served in. Johnson did it as easily and naturally as breathing, and while keeping track of their whereabouts using colors was not so easy as Johnson painted it, Manfredi did it well enough. He was blue, Johnson was red, and the walls did not deserve any color except mud.

Manfredi waddled the four steps and sat down. He put his head on Johnson’s shoulder as Johnson's flipper came around him.

IOIOIOIOIO

They sat facing each other tailor fashion, close enough that their knees were touching. Manfredi's flipper rested in his, lying between the two of them. The physical contact was a habit now, and a comfortable and welcome one. Their sense of touch kept them grounded when the walls seemed to contract or expand, the darkness hiding it all.

“Sounds as if you didn’t like your first CO," Manfredi noted in a snarky tone.

It was their daily ritual after they ate to tell each other stories. True or fiction, it didn’t matter. They often stuck to truth, though, or stories passed down to them. “I didn’t,” Johnson said with what Manfredi termed his basic, plain, uncompromising sense of self. “Even on missions, we fought a lot. And that was before The Incident.”

“Oak Gall Head?” Manfredi said with a laugh. "She called you that and you didn't gripe to HQ?"

“I don’t laugh at your embarrassing childhood nicknames,” Johnson said in an aggrieved tone. "And no, I didn't run to HQ with every little hurt feeling, like some penguins I know and touch knees with at this moment, just saying."

Manfredi gauged Johnson's position and aimed a slap at him, not fooled. “Oak Gall Head. And I thought there was no way to twist your first name.”

“It’s better than Sissy Man.”

“Sure, Oak.”


	7. Chapter 7

DAY 320 

Routine. In the beginning, they had none. They would count the days and hours, but there was no routine. They talked aimlessly, the silences frequent and the contact sporadic.

Johnson quickly realized the importance of routine, once he accepted the reality of their situation. Reality not meaning awareness, but more than that – damning knowledge, more like. He and Manfredi set up a schedule as much as was possible. Wake, eat, talk, silence, relax, play, talk, exercise, play, sleep. It was comforting to know what was ahead and to control it to some extent. It brought order where there was chaos, a sturdy structure for them to fall apart in. It was safety.

Waking every morning – morning being whenever they both woke – was filled with mingled despair and acceptance, with a strange sort of happiness as they moved forward to the things that made up their lives. Sometimes Johnson would smile when he woke. Sometimes he did not.

Eating was one of the things that reminded them of the lack of control. It was the same thing every day and while it had all the necessary nutrients in it, they both nevertheless lost weight.

They always ate silently, that part of the routine grown and not born. They discovered with the implement of the routine that the food and water did not arrive every day – it appeared to be slightly off, slightly random, and Johnson silently cursed the Big Bad at this subtle torture. Now and then he cursed Skipper for leaving them here so long, out of reason, out on a limb of extreme paranoia that he thought Skipper himself would fall victim to in his weaker moments. It felt good to indulge this sentiment and it felt good to end it on his own power, without Manfredi's knowledge or help. 

Then they would talk, right after they shared the water. Talking was one of the few things they looked forward to. They would talk of many things, usually serious things this first time of the new day. The past, who did what to whom, who gambled, who drank too much, who whored too much, excepting all the past they knew personally through shared years of re-upping. Going nowhere, and everywhere, exploring the labyrinths of each other’s minds.

Silence, to think. To allow it and limit it, so it would not spin out of control, collapsing everything in the weight of its power.

They would relax in each other’s loose hold. They would touch nothing save the floor and each other, and the walls would disappear to nothingness, out of sight and out of mind.

Play was teasing; play was anything of joy; play was making rules and breaking them, doing away with the rules of the game.

Exercise was what Johnson had insisted upon; body and mind were connected. He had convinced Manfredi to include it as part of the routine. Their exercise was not mindless, but focused and intense. They stretched and danced, Johnson even teaching Manfredi tai chi, in all that he knew how to teach, with Manfredi blind in more than one way. Manfredi would stretch out and Johnson would trace the curve of his body, making sure Manfredi had it right. Sometimes the shifting of air currents wasn’t enough to tell the subtle positioning.

Play again. Games and strategies, stories and outlandish tales of truth. It was a reaching again for that quality of life that they did not possess here. More than comfort or surroundings, but the reassurance of knowing another enough to play, and knowing without doubt that the other would catch you should you trip and fall.

And rest, apart and trying not to stare out into the darkness, to do it all over again.


	8. Chapter 8

DAY 363

“Our first squad called you Fixer because you could fix any little need or want one of us had by your black market connections. Extra malted milk balls, Brylcreem-For-Birds, you name it. You’re cheating, Fixer.” Johnson’s voice was calm and amused, floating out of nothing. They weren’t touching.

“I am not,” Manfredi said in a deliberate, affronted tone. He hid a feather behind him, even knowing perfectly well Johnson couldn’t see it. Maybe he could sense it with his superior directional finding or something.

“You added a pawn piece!” Johnson insisted.

“What? You saw it?” Manfredi said mockingly. The pawns were the littlest, downiest of down feathers; the kings the thickest tail feathers. Their board was the floor with rather loose boundaries. ‘Steps’ were created by long feathers from their heads, but the sides of the board were endless, without boundaries. Manfredi lightly and silently slipped his flippertip forward to barely touch the quills from their bodies, finding his way. A lot had to be done in their heads, but moving the pieces required a light touch so as not to disturb what degree of organization they did possess. He moved to take away that extra piece ---

\--- and bumped into Johnson’s questing appendage.

“Ahah!” Johnson triumphed.

Manfredi snatched his flipper away, laughing, but Johnson followed him. He scrambled backwards, and Johnson scrambled forwards, ruining their board. “Hey!” Manfredi said, forgetting himself.

“We’ll fix it,” Johnson said, grasping Manfredi's wrist as if it were a scrod's fin. Just as naturally, he began to tickle him.

Manfredi squirmed breathlessly, striking out in blind purpose.

Eventually, though, Johnson let him go. They paused together, silent, breathing and taking a moment to calm down.

“Three hours,” Johnson suggested after a brief trip to the latrine.

“It felt more like four,” Manfredi disagreed.

“Four, then,” Johnson said easily. “Eleven months plus twenty-nine days plus six hours plus four hours ...”

Manfredi nodded, repeating after him.

Another moment of silence.

“So what do you want to play next?”

“What about a story? I want to hear more about this Juanita lady.”

Manfredi laughed. “Skipper asked me that once.” The words fell from his tongue without thought, startling him. Skipper headed that forbidden list of things they did not discuss after their first raw, unbridled days. They talked of everything else, him and Johnson, and it seemed that now walls were dissolving.

“I’m not surprised,” Johnson said at last, no trace of critique in his voice. There was a thoughtful lilt to it, instead. Permission to speak plainly, sir?

Manfredi rose to his feet and walked over to Johnson; small steps, always small steps. When he reached him, he took his flipper. The physical contact felt comfortable, normal. He encouraged Johnson to stand as well, taking his flippers and placing them just so to demonstrate. "Me and Juanita went to a dance – lotsa dances we didn't know and there was this one we learned together, the chamarrita ...”

IOIOIOIOIO

It was the time of day when they talked.

“It seems simple, but think about it because it was my favorite TV show,” Manfredi challenged, sitting tailor fashion, eyes closed, but facing in Johnson’s general direction. “The main character, she's what you call conflicted.” He paused. “Kind of like the Big Boss, in fact,” he noted with a teasing tone.

Johnson laughed lightly. “I doubt your program was a commentary on our organization.”

“But how about the time everybody skedaddled away from overseas HQ because of the bomb scare and she was first out because she claimed later _I got out first because I'm not expendable?_ Didn't that make the rest of us feel just ducky, oh you know what I mean,” Manfredi returned, more serious than he generally was.

A slight pause, and Manfredi wondered if Johnson were shrugging. "You got me there, bub. I felt the opposite of ducky that night.”

Manfredi cocked his head, considering. “I’ll accept that answer,” he said finally. He rose to his feet, aware Johnson was still sitting. Two steps to the left, and he was just to Johnson's right. Out of sight, in a bizarre way, or that’s how it felt; he couldn’t quite look at him here. Silly, how such conventions still bound him in moments of uncertainty or nervousness. “Do you think Skipper realized that it dissed us peons? That the team was aware of it?”

“The ways we commando penguins group our rookeries underneath the big cheese at overseas HQ, you mean?” Johnson said, then answered his own question. “I don’t think so. Skipper struck me as a penguin having difficulty seeing both sides of an argument, but hey, you know, he's young. Let him ripen in command before we pass judgment.”

Tacit permission arising again, more clearly this time. “I know,” Manfredi whispered. “But he did try, sometimes, and he did see.”

“I admire him more than other skippers you and me've had,” Johnson said hesitantly. “Whatever mancrush you have on him, I have not forgotten that I admire him.”

Manfredi turned his head sharply, as useless as it was. “Yes,” he said at last, to have something to say, not sure if he was agreeing or confirming.

A moment more. “Did you ever look at this Captain Carrot comic, the one with the bunnies?” Johnson began, and the topic shifted, not abruptly, but in its due time.

IOIOIOIOIO

Manfredi thought it strange that they slept together now, as close as his parents had. It was practical and yet so very odd, still.

Still, the game pieces and talking freely were even better than beds to make him feel not alone.

It wasn’t that Manfredi liked to watch Johnson, precisely. For one thing, there wasn’t anything to watch. But there were times when he let himself become hyperaware of him, of what he was doing, of every breath and every movement. When he focused on Johnson, he didn’t exist in his own mind and that was sometimes a comfort.

And sometimes, just sometimes, he would be aware of Johnson's regard, and he would close his eyes and take that in because he understood and it was all right.


	9. Chapter 9

DAY 377

They cracked the routine slightly. They didn’t break it, the routine was still there and they still followed it, but it was altered slightly.

Manfredi counted the paces wall to wall, and Johnson let him.

IOIOIOIOIO 

They worshipped their routine. It was everything to them, and thus, it was their god. In it, life was structured, apparently meaningful; without it, there was nothing. But like many worshippers, they did not always obey, and it was always bad for them when they didn’t. Johnson felt a sense of spite when he did not follow it; so did Manfredi. He’d asked him. But it was also a delicious sort of self-destructive freedom, one they could not seem to help but seek. Their nature as penguin commandos, perhaps.

Still, they followed the routine. Mostly.

There was the occasional argument over whether to change the routine. It always ended the same: the routine must be unchanged. It lost validity if it were changed. They both knew this, instinctively, and did not argue over much about it.

The routine was too precious to lose.

IOIOIOIOIO 

It almost seemed like everything was a whisper, when no thing but themselves made sound: “Four plus six hours plus twelve days plus one year ...”


	10. Chapter 10

DAY 412 

After so long a time of no bother from any screws, much less contact from one, they realized the gulag was deserted, or the work was done by others, whatever the work was, or that they didn't pass muster somehow for doing work. It was just the two of them rattling in their cage together and no matter how long they had been comrades, it was tough to realize they might never have any other friends.

“I don’t think about it much now,” Manfredi replied. “Those game nights with the guys.” Comfort, and a slow movement in the air currents, closer to him. He could feel Johnson react, calm.

“Neither do I,” Johnson said. He further relaxed, and Manfredi knew it because he was attuned to every sound he made, as Johnson was to his.

“We have new games,” Manfredi added. “Do you think we’ll always play them much?”

“Yes,” Johnson said instantly.

Manfredi paused, and so did Johnson. Games came and went with their lives and how they changed. Would they always play the games so much, these games where it did not depend on sight?

Yes. Yes.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Counting was a bad thing. Counting meant obsession with their captivity. In the beginning, it was time they had counted – which they still did, but to a lesser degree. They carefully, ever so carefully, controlled how they did it. No repeating. It was part of the schedule, when they would estimate time, when they would add it all up.

Counting how many steps it was from wall to wall was not permitted. Counting the number of flipper-width spaces from one wall to another was not permitted. They had, at one point, quietly agreed that they could not do that anymore because whenever they miscounted, they would panic: it seemed the walls were shrinking. And they would recount, and calm down.

It was, Manfredi thought, like an itch.

Irresistible, painful, but seemingly so necessary. What did scratching do but temporarily deaden the nerves? And what was he doing to himself, he wondered, in counting?

He started to walk, to count, when Johnson approached, the sound of his movement soft and yielding. Johnson caressed his neck, and Manfredi went still. “Time for play?” Johnson murmured into his earhole, so close he could feel his warmth.

Manfredi only nodded. He figured that the air currents would relay the gesture.


	11. Chapter 11

DAY 592

“Do you think Skipper’ll ever know?”

“That we were down here and what we did?” Johnson shrugged. “Who knows if we’ll ever know anything for it to even matter?”

A moment’s pause, and an icier tone: “Johnson.”

Johnson sat up from his slump. Manfredi was six steps away, sitting calmly, correctly. Something within his tone, the way he breathed, told him that. “He would care,” Johnson said softly, closing his eyes.

“Yes,” Manfredi said, but his voice trembled.

OIOIOIOIO 

“You know,” Manfredi said, “I think it’s really stupid the way you try to control yourself sometimes.”

Johnson didn’t turn – he was already facing him – but he was startled out of his unfocused state. They had been sitting in silence for about twenty minutes, doing nothing, saying nothing. Thinking. “What?”

“You always have to be in control,” Manfredi said matter-of-factly. “Never show anything. Just shuttle it away. Stifle it like you did when Order of the Day was to swab the deck and don't think I didn't see that face you got. No matter how you feel, you just do your job. Whatever the hell that is, here.”

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Johnson responded, unshaken. “I am attempting to find out where we are. It's helpful when you're quiet so I can concentrate.”

“Attempting to stifle,” Manfredi responded in an agreeable tone. “You hardly say anything to me anymore. You’ve changed since the way you used to be when we first came here.”

“I haven’t,” Johnson denied, but something inside him quibbled at that.

“Being strong doesn’t mean being quiet,” Manfredi whispered. “I know it, even if I’m not that way myself.”

Johnson didn’t reply. But he stared out at the darkness in vain, trying to see something other than Manfredi’s words. Manfredi didn’t push; he waddled away.

IOIOIOIOIO 

“I wonder what he’s doing now,” Manfredi whispered. The quiet shifts of his feet as he walked kept Johnson aware of where he was. His whisper was very soft, seeming to come from nowhere, or very close. Johnson didn't bother to ask if the he were Skipper or the Big Bad and maybe it didn't matter.

“Perhaps the same thing the last time you asked that question,” Johnson said with a flash of irritation.

Manfredi stopped. “It was rhetorical,” he snapped.

“Then why talk about it?” Johnson returned. The mentions of Skipper had grown more and more frequent, as time went on. Gradual, even healing, Johnson thought, so that one on the list of forbidden topics drifted away. First off, gentle touches in a conversation, then entire gobs of talk time devoted to him. He heard affection, love, in Manfredi's voice, and then anger. “You’re just holding onto him,” Johnson said, knowing he was cutting deep and wondering if he were making the wound worse or cleaning it.

“Like you hold onto your big fat direction sensing that's meaningless down here?” Manfredi said after a second, mocking as he rarely was.

Johnson flinched. Manfredi's insistence of not judging, of not thinking ill before all the facts came in had in turn irritated him. That wouldn’t normally bother him, except he knew he was right, just like Manfredi knew he was right: Johnson held onto his direction senses, trying to keep some fragment of the time before, just as Manfredi held onto Skipper.

“Maybe I do,” Johnson said, struggling to keep his voice even, “but at least my foolish, painful holding on isn’t making me go crazy.” He was hissing by the end, hurt feelings making him tremble like the tongue-tied adolescent he never wanted to be again.

“Go to hell!”

“We aren’t there?” And Johnson laughed, the sound coming out more sarcastic than it felt.

A quick step – hard, the sound was hard, Manfredi was moving fast. The first blow landed on Johnson's shoulder, telling him where he was, the position of his body, and he grabbed for Manfredi's wrists, catching one and getting the upper part of the other. Manfredi's beak, sharp as a piranha tooth, scraped down to skin through feathers and he heard Manfredi's harsh breathing as warm blood coursed.

“I’m sorry, bro,” Johnson gasped although he was the one physically hurt. Wild thoughts of bleeding out burned into his mind because this event was an event and not one sequence of talk, play, sleep, exercise, or eating in an endless series.

“So am I,” Manfredi said, nearly choking over the words, making them all that more sincere. His body was still tense, but the attack had stopped, and Johnson let him go. His grip was still loosely curled around his upper flippers, but he didn’t hold Manfredi anymore. It was merely a touch.

“It’s not that easy to let go,” Manfredi murmured.

“Isn’t this our reality now?” Johnson whispered. “At least the dreams will stop hurting, if we can hold onto each other instead of what’s gone lost to us,” he said, struggling with the words, searching for the right ones and only coming close.

Manfredi inhaled sharply. He moved from the grip and Johnson let his flippers fall. He touched Manfredi's face. “I’ll let go if you do.”

Johnson applied a compliment that he hoped Manfredi would take the right way. “Always the fixer who can get anybody in the squad anything on the black market?” But it was not biting, but warmth, and Johnson laughed when Manfredi smiled and Johnson felt the smile beneath his touch.

“Not so much,” Manfred said quietly.

Johnson nodded and he reached up to Manfredi's face, trailing flippertips down to the dimpled skin beneath. He pushed hard enough to make a mark but not break the skin except for one bead of blood over the jugular. He was meticulous like that.

Agreement sealed with a blood pact.  
  



	12. Chapter 12

DAY 801

Manfredi was twitchy and Johnson was angry.

It went like this:

“Don’t do that.” Firm.

“I can walk around when I want to.” Light, with an edge.

“Not when you’re counting.” Dark.

“So are you allowed, then, to wallow in misery like you always do and I ain't allowed to count?” Hurting.

“Don’t – ” Hurting.

“Johnson ...” Uncertainty, tempered and sharp.

“I’m not wallowing anymore.” Soft. “No counting.” Sarcastic.

A long pause. “No counting.” The slow, methodical walking stopped. “No wallowing.”

It wasn’t the schedule’s time to relax, but they both broke it anyway with no argument and held each other.

Manfredi was twitchy, wanting to count, and Johnson was angry, wanting to grieve.  
  



	13. Chapter 13

DAY 829 

Johnson drifted. It was quiet, as always, but there was calm, too, and that was pleasant. Manfredi lay in his embrace as much as he lay in his, and the only sound was that of them breathing. He could feel his warm breaths, slow and even, on his face like an isolated pond. Still entrancing, even its stillness.

It was the time of day when they relaxed; when the walls were as thin as paper in their minds.

His flipper was settled on Manfredi's waist, and Manfredi's flipper lay over his back. The warmth between them was delicious. It felt like home. They did not, now, see things in relation to what they were, but how they made them feel. Johnson realized that when Manfredi started describing things in how they felt to him – not how fruit tasted, but the memories behind them. The red ones were his mother, the yellow his older sister that he tried to match up with Johnson on a blind date. Things became immaterial in their minds; emotions and memory became tangible.

“If we get out,” Manfredi whispered, quite suddenly. “We’ll make him pay.”

“Yes, we will,” Johnson agreed, just as faintly. He knew that Manfredi did not mean Skipper, but the Big Bad, but if any ill will spilled over into anger that Skipper had left them, had left _Manfredi_ , alone so long, well that was what happened sometimes. Feelings spilled like when a barkeep muffed pulling a long draught of pilsner and the pale stuff drowned the counter. You couldn't control who got soaked.

A moment more of breathing. Then Manfredi spoke – not of their situation, but of what would be. He explained, in soft tones and harsh words, how he would destroy the Big Bad's base and the evil bird himself. He described every dirty trick he knew about killing, every way to slit a throat from behind with the piano wire that they might one day figure out how to loosen from the door or the bottom of the latrine and, you know, actually do the killing. Manfredi lay out the plan clear as day, and Johnson smiled because it was so perfect.

He didn’t think him weak for thinking of revenge. Manfredi was strong.

And still not, he thought. He brushed his beak over Manfredi's beak and felt his smile. He felt the quirk of his brow, the intensity of his blind stare as the fine feathers around his eyes crinkled.

He kissed him softly on the forehead. Manfredi exhaled warmth.

IOIOIOIOIO

Manfredi felt what Johnson wanted him to feel.

Like velvet. Incredibly, stars were the glitter on the top of Atlantis curves as they gathered light from outside the dome. The velvet sky was a deep purple, not black, and the stars always twinkled with laughter, even in the depth of the sea because Atlantis forged new technology that ought to be impossible to create: sim-stars. The predators of the deep were terrifying in their beauty, whirling past Manfredi at brilliant speeds as he swam through the airlock with Johnson for a brief foray outside the dome. Some stark and silent, and eerily right in their own way, some green and teeming with life crawling on their outside skin and inside their guts also, and others flashing mixtures of orange and yellow and turquoise, all those strange colors you could never imagine on your own. Johnson tinged his story with reality because their quick swim lasted two minutes, which was as long as their sort of penguin could handle great depths.

He whispered the best travel story he could think of into Manfredi's earhole, and Manfredi closed his eyes, seeing it all.


	14. Chapter 14

DAY 833

It was hard not to scratch his own skin, diving through dense outer feathers and slicing through the layer of down. He paced restlessly, muscles spasming in tension. One block and another and another, and he couldn’t help himself from thinking about it, and it all added up relentlessly.

He wanted to tear it off. “Johnson?” His voice sounded desperate even to himself.

“Yes? Manfredi?” A few quick steps and he felt a touch settle on his shoulder.

Is it possible to feel claustrophobic in your own skin? Manfredi wondered.

“Manfredi?”

“Knock me out, Johnson. Whatever you do, just do it fast, please, bro,” he whispered, grabbing him and tightening until he knew it was painful.

“Manfredi – no – “

“Yes! I can’t get out of here, I can't breathe,” Manfredi sobbed as he lowered his head until Johnson could not see his face, if Johnson could see. Shame flooded his soul.

Johnson chopped at the join of neck and head just so, and Manfredi sagged into his supportive flippers as a last thought fluttered before he passed out.

Johnson wouldn’t do this for him again; there was no one to do it for Johnson.


	15. Chapter 15

DAY 835 

Still talking to Manfredi, Johnson took his time telling him how soft the down next to his skin felt, how smooth and clean. He was behind him, one flipper settled at his waist, the other gently massaging his belly. He prodded his hips against Manfredi, telling him to take a step, and Manfredi said he would; and when he did, Johnson knew it was not rough stone that Manfredi felt beneath his feet, but the warm tile that led to the balcony of their Atlantean suite.

And outside on the balcony, purple velvet skies shone with sparkling sim-stars.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Intangible.

Manfredi lay next to him, half on top of him, his head on his chest and one flipper casually thrown over. He was warm, and the curve of his back where his flipper rested felt as beautiful as Juanita's was in Manfredi's description of her. So relaxed, amazing, even now. He could feel Manfredi rise with him each breath, could match Manfredi's breathing to his. Manfredi was asleep. They no longer slept separately. Johnson was awake, staring up.

Mama Nature was intangible. Unexplainable. Oh, the COs and a snotty corpsman or two pretended to understand it, but they didn’t, not really. Not that NCOs or warrant officers had any better of an understanding – or that he did. He remembered, vaguely, his first CO saying something similar to him once. And the saying went through his head, like the slow drip of water into the ocean from the bottom most part of a glacier that you could see: The more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

Manfredi was intangible in a different way, in an odd way, but he was. He could feel Manfredi, touch him, but his mind amazed him. His spirit, his personality, what made him _his_ , as much as any penguin could belong to another. It was marvelously strange and alluring. Manfredi had such strength. He broke, he cried, but he rebuilt himself. And how he did it was intangible.

Johnson wasn’t intangible. He knew when he broke that he couldn’t put himself back together like Manfredi could. He’d avoided it somewhat, learning as Manfredi did to adapt to this environment. But where Manfredi found comfort in hope, in the little things, Johnson couldn’t grasp that intangible thing. He was limited. Why had he once thought that he could see more than most?

He stroked Manfredi’s back. Manfredi felt so real when he touched him. He inhaled, exhaled. Inhale. Exhale. He never wanted Manfredi to just exhale.

IOIOIOIOIO 

It was getting harder to remember. Things once familiar became unfamiliar, blurred in the attempt to recall them properly.

Johnson knew that if the reality of the outside universe was fading for him, it surely was for Manfredi. He could recall things with perfect clarity, every moment sharp and clear, as cutting as his favorite shuriken. All commandos could. He wasn’t sure when he had stopped trying to remember except that it was gradual, happening less and less often. And now when he tried to remember, the memory was distant. Fading in the way of a dream, where everything is perfect when you first wake, but as time goes on it leaves you, even as you frantically try to grasp what remains. It wasn’t the clarity that was leaving him, it appeared to be his ability to connect to what he was remembering.

Of course, then there were the little true remembrances. They flashed in his mind, oddly clear, and treasured in the brief moments they lasted.

But they didn’t hurt anymore.

Was it a good or bad thing, Johnson wondered, when the past no longer haunts as it once did?

“Manfredi?” Johnson was five steps away: close enough to hear his breathing, far enough away to show he didn’t want to be bothered as they usually expressed to each other in the silence time after talk, but this was too important to put off until their next official talk time.

“Hmm?”

“Do you still cry at night?”

Night; how silly that even now the notion persisted. “I never cried,” Manfredi said.

A slight pause. Johnson knew he had. “But, dude, you held onto it then. You cried, I know you did, you just didn’t sob.”

“Yeah, okay,” Manfredi said, admitting the truth of that. He could certainly admit to him, here, Johnson felt, out of reach of barracks gossip and smarmy officers' counseling that did more harm than good, just like after The Incident.

“So then, now that we’ve gotten over speedbumps, do you?” he said lightly, teasing, but the question still serious.

“No,” Manfredi said at last. “I don’t think so.”

“Do you think we’ve really lost our marbles now?”

“What’s with all the questions?” Manfredi retorted.

“I think we’re sane, but it don't mean anything,” Johnson said, as if Manfredi hadn’t spoken.

Manfredi held out his flipper that made the sound that Johnson knew well. “Johnson.” Johnson rose, and after a few seconds of searching he took Manfredi's flipper and sat beside him. “We’ve adjusted,” was all Manfredi said.

“What do we adjust to when we get out?”

Manfredi laughed as Johnson considered that the joy of talking to him remained as inescapable as it was sometimes unavoidable. “Whatever waits for us we can handle, goomba. I, for one, plan to get fat.”

Johnson put his head on Manfredi's shoulder. After a second, Manfredi let go of Johnson's flipper to hug him hard enough to make him gasp. With his usual discipline, Johnson regulated his breathing like in drownproofing training, smooth and even. Manfredi wasn’t upset and had he been, he probably would have kept out of reach. His next words pinked Johnson's heart.

“I don’t think about getting out anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

That was a lie. A discerning mind that cared to see would see that. But it was a comforting lie, and a lie that let them dissolve the boundaries, and for a while, at least, they could play and pretend they didn’t in the dark. He realized this later on, in the relaxing time, so Johnson let it pass. It was these little things that they did for each other that counted the most.


	16. Chapter 16

DAY 917

The balcony was endless. With each step into fantasy Manfredi took, Johnson gave him something new. The initial perk had been the luxurious room with cross-hatched parquet beneath his feet. The second, the moiré silk top hat he would be wearing to the Penguin Commando Spring Cotillion if they were officers which, in the year they got captured, took place in Atlantis like a destination wedding, only nobody got married or even engaged at the Cotillion. The third step took them both out onto the tile-floored balcony under the sim-stars and the purple sky of Atlantis' dome for air breathers. He created such wonderful things for Manfredi in the story and when Manfredi laughed at mermaid antics after what seemed morose months but were only days, Johnson smiled into Manfredi's neck enough to tickle him.

Johnson designed the fourth step: a sightseeing waddle under the sim-sun after a night of bliss on 800 count Egyptian cotton sheets. Johnson’s breath was warm on Manfredi's cheek and the warmth of the faux sun bathed Manfredi's feathers, filled him to his bones. The ball was a fiery orange, so bright in places it was yellow and white, and in others a dark red. Long strands of plasma seemed to lift from its surface, only to fall again in massive loops that looked to be made of calamari tentacles. Johnson made sure to include Manfredi's favorite food in his creation. What a pal he was, mused Manfredi.

“Another step,” Johnson whispered. "I made us fully commissioned officers in this one, remember, so we belong at the Cotillion with the other officers like Skipper and the Big Boss. Take another step, Manfredi."

Another step into the unknown. Atlantis spread out before the two of them, from the dark hued grown coral structures of the giant aquapolis to the deep sea bioluminescent fish circling just outside of the dome's air lock. Refracting again and again shone the light of the sim-sun embedded in the dome. Small fish with lights of their own crashed into others or so it looked through the slight distortion of the dome's clear material, and Johnson inserted into his story a sudden, strange episode of themselves crashing their Atlantean turbo sea sled to wind up injured enough to need prosthetics – 

"Uh. Forget I said that, Manfredi. Dunno where that came from." Manfredi rubbed Johnson's brow to smooth the frown he knew grew to outlandish proportions. He sought to distract.

"Atlantis, huh? How did we arrive this time? Did you talk that beluga whale into carrying us down there?"

"We got there by sub and you know how I hate subs. Just riff on the story, okay?"

Aw, it was time to be a friend. "I'm good with your story ending here, bro. Remember _my_ story about funny panicky penguins sucking rubber from SCUBA gear until the sub's dive officer blew the emergency main ballast tank? He turned chicken thinking they was gonna get crushed. Only the sub was _waaaaay_ above its crush depth, what a laugh on him --- "

"Stop. I was on a real sub when something like, like that happened and it was no picnic. I didn't tell you everything that happened 'cause you're delicate. Then you made up a phony story based on my true story."

"Delicate? Says who?" Manfredi turned to Johnson, who had briefly recalled to him such an experience.

"Shut up, close your eyes and let's go back to Atlantis." Groping flippers shut Manfredi's eyes but they couldn't stop his beak.

“No wonder you hate subbing,” Manfredi said, eyes still closed, as he summoned the colors orange and purple to the best of his recollection. He touched Johnson's face and was surprised to find it wet. 

In his next expressed thought, Johnson denied hating despite his earlier slip of the tongue, well, that was his way.

“I oughta say that I don’t hate subbing, I strongly dislike the things that always happen to me when I sub,” and despite the flippant words, Johnson's voice was uneven.

“Johnson,” Manfredi whispered, turning around and uselessly opening his eyes wide to focus entirely on Johnson as the undersea splendor in his mind vanished with the closing of the tale. They could always come back to it. It was one of the nice things about being here since they were never pressed for time for work or other commitments. Manfredi wondered if the gulag lived up to its name and somebody had come for them, made them slaves, if that could have made their lives easier. Less constricted, but easier? He didn't know.

Manfredi gripped Johnson hard to snap him out of it, but Johnson's flippers trembled. Manfredi cradled Johnson's head, but Johnson slipped down, falling, and Manfredi lowered himself to the floor with him. Johnson shook helplessly and Manfredi stroked his face, ignoring the wetness, trying to comfort, not knowing if he was succeeding and doubting it.

Johnson laid his head on Manfredi's shoulder, fitting perfectly, tucked under his beak and above his keelbone, quietly falling apart but in an oddly organized fashion.

That was Johnson.


	17. Chapter 17

DAY 943

Break right through to truth.

“You should have been there for him.” Accusing, but not meanly so.

“You should have realized what was happening.” Curt. Perhaps.

“You should have brought your BlackBerry.” Sly.

“You should have realized how Skipper was newly commissioned and inexperienced, even if he could bluff confidence like no CO I ever had.” Even slyer.

“I should have tried harder to reach HQ.” Sadness.

“I should have listened to the Big Boss and not brought you along to this new team. We might have gotten our warrant officer ranks back if we split up.” Regret.

"Who brought who along? I am my own penguin." Support.

Simple enough.

A long silence. Neither touched the other. Manfredi’s breaths were coming rapidly, far quicker than normal; Johnson suspected he was having the same problem, though perhaps less noticeably. They were always very aware of the other’s breathing. Breath was life. Breathing was living.

“Feel any better?” Johnson asked at last, throat tight, the words difficult. He didn’t reach out; the absence was somehow telling to him.

“No.” Shortly, but that was all.

“Neither do I.” Agreement, and with agreement, healing.

Tensely breathing; too tense to relax enough to enjoy a breath. Manfredi assayed a test, to Johnson's relief.

"Let's try to remember what Kowalski looked like, Johnson. I'll go first. Tall."

"Skinny."

"I'd say wiry."

"Okay, wiry. Next, Private is a little dumpling."

"Yup, roly poly. And Rico barfed all the time."

"Useful stuff, though, not just puke. Skipper was --- "

"Our best skipper."

"Yeah."

IOIOIOIOIO

Manfredi was laughing.

The game was simple, strategy but simple. Unfortunately, it was a game Johnson didn’t know. Two years, seven months, three days, four hours, and it was new. And he was losing horribly.

“How do you do that so easily?” Johnson asked because he wanted to know; because it was part of him; because ... he ran out of becauses.

“Do what? Win?” Mischief.

“Laugh,” Johnson replied. “As you make me,” he added with a chuckle.

Manfredi stayed silent for twenty-nine heartbeats. “Good question.”

“I had a egghead instructor at NCO school who would say that to every question he didn’t know the answer to, you know,” Johnson teased.

“So did I!” Manfredi giggled.


	18. Chapter 18

DAY 1270

Profound thoughts came and went, sometimes voiced, most times not. “It’s about faith.”

Johnson started, tensing to get up. Manfredi gently pushed him down, and he surrendered. Manfredi lay behind him, curled up against his back, one flipper lying over his waist. “And what is faith?” Manfredi asked at last.

“Trust.”

Manfredi stroked Johnson's head. “And what do you trust in?”

A moment of silence. “That wrongs will be righted.” Johnson levered himself up, and Manfredi didn’t move except to draw a flipper down the side of Johnson's face, noting no wetness and knowing there would be none. 

“I trust you.”

With Johnson's next words, Manfredi regretted being too busy for their previous HQ's _Build Your Vocabulary With Alacrity!_ night school classes.

“Trust is intangible,” Johnson said.

Manfredi cocked his head. “Hmm? What's that word mean?”

“Am I real, Manfredi?”

Manfredi said nothing, not sure what Johnson needed to hear. But he needed something, clearly, and so he spoke. “You’re real. But what I can't see, what I don't yet know about you is, is intangible trust, like, like you said.”

“But I'm not like you.”

“Like me in what way?” Manfredi asked curiously.

“Do you remember the comic book we talked about six and a half hours ago, Manfredi?” Johnson said, in a tone that shouted he hoped Manfredi would not huff at the change of subject.

“Yes,” Manfredi answered, nodding at the same time; it was still a habit.

“Am I nothing and only exist because others see me?"

Manfredi paused carefully, waddling with a veil between him and the edge of whatever doubt or fear Johnson felt. Am I only a penguin commando? seemed to be what Johnson asked, and yet, Manfredi was never sure and could not be. He had to ground this bird or die trying. “And do you remember what the guy's sweetie said? 'Captain Carrot, even if you stayed human and never got to be rabbit again, I would still love you.’”

"You remembered what Private said that Mason said Phil said the comic said! You _do_ remember old times!"

"'Course I do, what did you think?" So that was it! Johnson feared losing his memory.

Talking about comic books brought them to normalcy, which was needed, Manfredi thought, because Johnson sounded nearer the deep end than he ever wanted to consider. That was scary. Funny animal comics held truths and the fact that Johnson mentioned Mason and Phil brought the whole Central Park Zoo into focus. The team protected it for ages by now even though the two of them had never met Mason or Phil but only heard later about them. Dang, they had been in the brig after The Incident when the rest of the team first met the zoosters to get a feel for the assignment: Private, Rico, Kowalski, and yes, Skipper.

Johnson shifted quickly, and Manfredi started in surprise when he was able to touch Johnson's face. And he thought over what he had said, and what Johnson had said. Are you my love? he wondered. Skipper is gone. And you are only Johnson to me.

IOIOIOIOIO

Johnson's crisis taught Manfredi that each step was a step into a part of the world that he had not ever been in. Oh, Johnson had toured Atlantis and he had not, but with Johnson's stories he felt as if he had. Atlantis remained his favorite, and Chile was second because Juanita had lived in Punta Arenas. It wasn’t that they didn’t think about the outside anymore; it just didn’t matter. They were here, and they had each other. The breathless ocean depth of their minds was their world, and they could be satisfied with that.


	19. Chapter 19

DAY 1313

Johnson touched the walls. Cold. Hard. Stone. The metal of the door that never opened could hardly be called a door. The door was smooth except the grooves in the food slot, which were chilled to the touch as always and contained wire strung vertically. The wires moved up or down, they weren't sure which, when the food box slid in or out, and then they screeched back into the grooves. He and Manfredi had lost a great deal of weight, but there was still no way in Hades either could fit through the narrow slot even if the wires turned to dust.

He felt no pain and no sadness.

Faith was trust; he trusted that even if they died here, they would have this: each other. That was Mama Nature’s gift to them. He could be fulfilled with that. Would he have ever known Manfredi so deeply other than this? Too high a price, perhaps, or one that should have never been paid, but it was a gift nevertheless.

He trusted Mama Nature. He trusted Manfredi. He had faith in those things. Somehow Manfredi knew, and he said nothing when Johnson touched the door, that _rovdyrkjeft_ door, and it was all right that it was closed: accepted even if not acceptable.

And he was granted a new kind of peace brought by more than Mama Nature.

IOIOIOIOIO

Sometimes he’d pick a word and think about it. _Avoid_. Avoidance. It was impossible to avoid Manfredi in here. Very possible to avoid everything else.

At first, he had thought that were things you couldn’t really avoid. But, he realized, you can always avoid it. Blank it out of your mind, forget it happened, refuse to believe it exists. He remembered a grizzled MCPO teaching a class of young recruits a survival course. Johnson had thought it silly at first – he already knew how to survive in a wilderness with no sea or even fresh water.

Then the MCPO started talking to them about torture and never to block out the pain, and as long as they did that they would win in the end. You could ignore a scratch, feathers pulled out along with some skin, or a broken beak, but ignore torture and you will be lost in what its absence creates, he told them.

Why he was thinking of all this now, he didn’t know. He didn’t avoid Manfredi. He didn’t avoid the reality of him, the beauty of his nature or the temper that lurked beneath. Not the rudeness nor the laughter. He was always here.

IOIOIOIOIO

Sometimes it was peaceful. It was always quiet, unless they deliberately made it not quiet, but sometimes it was peaceful. Peace was a different thing, a thing of the essence of a person. A deep, settled contentment; unshaken, at least for now.

Johnson was ready for a change.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Routine. Their beautiful thing.

“Do you ever think our routine is bad?”

“What do you mean?”

“That we get too set.” To see new things.

Uncertainty. “I don’t know.”

“I would never avoid you.”

“Whatever that means, thank you.” Amused.

“You’re welcome. I'm adding music to our routine, Manfredi."

"That's hardly a change because we sing --- "

"Instrumental music." Smug and perhaps shy.

"Johnson, you're not going off the deep end again, are you?" Concern.

"I'm positive I'm not. It's simple. Do you want to play strings or percussion?"

"Take it easy, boy. I'll tell you a story now." Soothing and strong.

"Hear me out. The wires at the bottom of the latrine block us from escaping and they're, they're like a harp when we pluck them, right, just like the wires in the food slot? And the five rocks we put in the corner so we wouldn't keep falling over them are percussion, see?" He was glad now that Manfredi could _not_ see because he knew he looked anxious to please. A commando should not look like he looked in this moment.

"It'll take practice, but all right, anything so I don't need to hear your squawking about it --- ow! What was that for?"

"Genius is never recognized in its own land, I heard someplace."

There. He'd set the stage for what he felt he must say next; he'd strategized in imagined communion with Skipper, who advised the tactic of slipping in a big reveal during another activity, such as calisthenics. It would go over well because it must. Music, mood, Manfredi. 

IOIOIOIOIO

"I can see why I fell in love with you."

Manfredi laughed. "Can you? _I_ think I could have done better."

Johnson shrugged, knowing Manfredi wouldn't see it. They were both breathing a little more than usual, the exercise starting to become real exertion now. They were both doing burpees. Even though Johnson couldn't see Manfredi, he could feel him in the wafting air currents and was turning his moves to coincide with his, giving a murmured correction here and there.

"What do you mean?" Ulps. Manfredi had gotten past the quick wisecrack retort stage, but Johnson was ready.

"I love your bravery." Johnson huffed a little with embarrassment. Gah, he loved lots of things about Manfredi, physical things that he ought not to. He didn't know why exactly, but he ought not to.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Johnson mumbled. He never figured Manfredi would leave him adrift like this. "Remember our first months here?” 

“Ah,” Manfredi said, and Johnson could almost feel his wince. “You know, the thing I always admired about you was your peace of mind. I wasn’t always sure what I wanted.” He sighed. “As you know,” he added, referring obliquely to Skipper, his voice soft with affection and no regret.

Johnson snorted as he pursued his fifteenth squat thrust. "That didn’t stop me from choosing wrong paths, making wrong choices,” he said reflectively and then continued a burpee with a difference, one that included a fart. “I understood why Skipper is attractive to you, despite my reaction when I found out.”

“But I still made the wrong decision?” Manfredi maintained his steady exercising, as they both would until they reached their usual forty-two reps. “Liking him wasn’t a weakness.” He hesitated. “You are more real to me now than he is.”

Manfredi suddenly stopped the burpee, throwing Johnson off balance because they had been so attuned. “Do you think Skipper is dead, Johnson?”

“He could be,” Johnson said easily, expecting the question would come again at some point.

“Do you think we’ll get out of here?”

“Looking doubtful,” Johnson said, amused. He heard no regret in Manfredi’s voice, just matter-of-factness.

Manfredi paused at his light tone. Johnson pictured how Manfredi's face would get that _oh you're pranking me aren't you Johnson_ look in the before time. “We avoid thinking about it, talking about it, even now,” he said softly.

 _It_ being the past. The future, too. “Yes, I know.”

“We pretend it don’t exist.”

“It might as well not, in here,” Manfredi said.

Manfredi twitched when Johnson gently settled both flippers on his shoulders. “But it does,” Johnson whispered. “And I still know you. I still love you, I still want to spend time with you.”

I never knew it could be such a gift to know another as well as I know you. But Johnson didn’t say that. Instead, he reached forward and brought Manfredi close, kissing him on the forehead, preening three cheek feathers, heedless of the dirt. Both had stopped noticing that long ago. 

“Five by five, Johnson."


	20. Chapter 20

DAY 1453

Manfredi thought best when Johnson was sleeping. Even in their daily quiet time, he felt connected and incredibly in tune with Johnson, although he would not change that for the world. When The Incident led him to follow Johnson into a tactic that had seemed sure fire to end a nasty battle sitch but was wrong-headed, their camaraderie welded the two of them together for good and for, well, not good. Mischief-making, maybe? Johnson had been wrong to suggest the tactic that could only be done by two penguins, and he had been wrong to follow Johnson. It cost both of them dearly. So all in all, heavy thinking was best left to solitude. Today, he was thinking about pain.

To avoid pain, certain things must be done: first, denial. Then, a new reality. Then, sticking to that new reality. Whether your leg was broken and you thought of fields of lilies, or if your heart was broken and all you could think of was revenge to ease it, it was normal. All very normal.

And then, what then? When the pain fades, does the new reality fade, too? But you’ve created it, haven’t you? How does it go away when it comforts you so?

IOIOIOIOIO 

Manfredi was sleepy. Sleepy, but not yet enough to actually fall asleep; a light doze, maybe, but those didn’t give much rest, so he stayed awake and dealt with being sleepy. A stray question just slipped out at the time of night he was sure was after midnight, topside. He wondered if there was a full moon that made him, well, loony.

“What is the soul, do you think?”

“You wanna discuss philosophy at this hour?” Johnson asked, voice slightly breathless from sleep, but waking up.

“Philosophy implies no actual answer. At least, to me it does,” Manfredi remarked. "Is the soul eternal?”

Johnson didn’t answer for a moment. “I believe so. I think a soul is separate from a bird’s personality.”

Manfredi exhaled, then took another deep breath. “Some animals have beautiful souls. You can see it shine out of them.”

A moment, then, “Yes,” was all Johnson said.

“And spirit.”

“Spirit being ...”

“Spirit!” Manfredi said, whacking Johnson on the shoulder.

“I know,” Johnson said, sounding amused. “I was just teasing you to define stuff. You have a strong spirit. Not so much fierce, but strong and serene.”

“And yours?”

“Shouldn’t I ask you what you think about that?”

“You don't need to. It's strong and, and loving.”

Johnson said nothing, but Manfredi realized after a moment it was because he couldn’t think of what to say. He tensed slightly, and he thought, You disagree? You may hide it, but you feel it. Manfredi had a notion, though, that there was nothing else there – no pain, or fear. Something within Johnson had settled, peacefully, over time.

“Go to sleep,” Johnson said at last.

“You think I haven’t been trying?”

“You’ve been talking.”

“I’ll help you sleep, then,” Johnson replied, “but you might have to stop talking first.”

Manfredi laughed as Johnson began to help. It wasn't how he thought Johnson was going to invite sleep because Johnson rose from Manfredi's side to approach the latrine.

"Oh good idea, Johnson! Get rid of anything stinky inside --- "

"Now you hush because it's not that." The latrine strings twanged according to how they had both practiced. Two minutes of mostly on-key plucking produced a mellow enough mood for sleep, Manfredi supposed, but then Johnson strummed a chord and sang.

_"Well, I learned how to love_  
_Even learned how to lie ... "_

Johnson warbled decently enough until the song concluded and Manfredi relaxed as, just for fun, he revisited Juanita's memory to tease Johnson. He supposed she was part of the past to keep back, even as close as he and Johnson were, to have something for himself because otherwise he'd have nothing to share or for Johnson to discover in him.

"It fits the midnight mood, I guess, but what a downer song. Practice makes perfect about lying, Johnson. Lie to me while you lie next to me." And Johnson approached their shared bed, stretched out behind Manfredi and massaged while he segued into another Atlantean tale. Ten minutes later, they slept.

IOIOIOIOIO

They waltzed. Manfredi hummed quietly, but here quietly was more than enough. His flippers were settled on Johnson's lower back, Johnson's loosely encircling the feathered top of Manfredi's head. He could feel Johnson's breaths, could taste the heat of his body. Manfredi's flippertips caressed two little circles down into his bare skin, just right there on his lower back, under the feathers. Johnson quivered when he pressed on that spot.

Manfredi's head lay on Johnson's shoulder, the curve of his neck set against his. Manfredi held his head up high, and he fit there perfectly that way. He tangled Johnson's head feathers that were scruffier than they had ever been and sometimes he would stroke up from Johnson's nape to his crown in a way that no penguin should like, and they both would shiver at the bold touch of petting against the direction of the feathers.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Manfredi pussyfooted around asking Johnson to do things sometimes. He alluded to the changes they had made in their lives after close on to fifteen hundred days, hoping Johnson would, you know, take the hint and not make him ask for help. He didn't really need help to accomplish this, but the changes made him appreciate having help with such a fundamental part of life.

He got a little cosmic as he prodded his inner poet. "Do you think the changes are little or big? Good or bad? Are you more patient, more loving, can you sit in the silence and see the beauty of the changes?"

Manfredi sat, back against the door, with Johnson's head in his lap. Johnson snorted. "Manfredi, do you need help with the thing?"

"No. Yes. No. It's just --- "

"Because I'll help you. How do you want it?"

Now Johnson had spoiled the mood. Manfredi bunted his hips up reflexively as Johnson turned his head to the side to do what he probably thought Manfredi wanted. Manfredi tilted Johnson's head back to facing upwards a little roughly. He felt Johnson's lying down shrug, a brush of feathers against that which strained to gain attention.

"It's just, as I was saying, a physical response to the stimulation of pressure --- "

"Aw shut up. Our usual way, then." Johnson brooked no denial as he knelt beside Manfredi and really, Manfredi didn't want him to stop. It was just more of the directness from Johnson that occasionally grated --- 

"Precisely. Uhn. Oh, Johnson." 

Johnson's touch with one flipper on Manfredi's shoulder and the other in his groin held firm. Manfredi felt the muscles in his thighs twitch as Johnson tended to him. The grip remained warm and comforting and exciting all at once. He bit his tongue while he let out a high pitched sigh as relief flooded through him.

Johnson's comments commingled with the sound of licking. "Now back" --- _lick_ \--- "to what you're" --- _lick lick_ \--- "getting quite good" --- _lick_ \--- "at, which is poetry. I like you this way."

IOIOIOIOIO 

They didn’t always get along.

Manfredi didn’t want to ‘get along’. He didn’t want to get anything. Sometimes he just wanted Johnson to leave him alone. So they would sit far apart as they could get in darkness and silence, because if they did nothing that’s always what happened as they ignored each other to the best of their ability. But he couldn’t help tracking Johnson, where he was sitting in relation to him, how fast he was breathing, even the sound of it –

They didn’t always get along. But they had to live with each other anyway.

“You know, this is a life changing experience,” Manfredi said suddenly.

Johnson said nothing, perhaps thinking it a rhetorical question and maybe it was.

“So how have we changed?” Manfredi continued as he paused for his own answer to gel in his mind. "Or have we?"

Johnson let loose a strangled noise. “You don’t think we’ve changed? We dream of new places, places we’ve never seen, we go days hardly talking, we’ve actually gotten used to never being able to see –”

“Are we better? Tell me, are we better?” Their world had tightened, become smaller. They dreamed of it being bigger, but if the world were to ever become solid, and real, and present, where would the dream go? Could they let go of happiness for something so vaguely remembered?

Johnson inhaled deeply. “All our experiences change us, and we always learn.”

Manfredi closed his eyes. “Is it normal that I still grieve for Skipper and what we could have had?”

To his surprise, he heard Johnson rise to his feet and waddle to him, each _pat-pat_ sounding unsettling. “Tell me,” Johnson asked in a calm voice, “is it part of you?”

Manfredi reached out in his blindness, taking Johnson's flippers. “Does grief ever leave?”

“Has your grief for that, that sitch changed into something else that you call grief but is smoothed over by time?” Johnson asked, still more quietly.

“I guess I have changed,” Manfredi whispered.

“But for the better?” Johnson finished. His voice dropped. “I know you now. And that has changed me. Isn’t that enough?”

Manfredi sighed. “How do you always know what to say?”

“I don’t until you ask it,” Johnson replied lightly. He paused, and in that pause Manfredi heard uncertainty. “I do my best to answer you.”

IOIOIOIOIO 

I am seeing the real you. Even if everything else I see is delusion to stop the pain of the dark, you are real.

Manfredi reminded himself of that often.


	21. Chapter 21

DAY 1530

Manfredi made him laugh. Sweet as soan papdi, energizing as a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon on a hot afternoon, a good laugh relieved tension like a backrub and proved as welcome as HQ dispatching the cavalry during The Incident.

“Come on, don’t you think it would have occurred to them to paddle us as greenies when we joined Skipper's team, Johnson?”

“We have a behavior code for that reason, right?”

“It wouldn't have really _hurt,_ you know, it’s like when me and you rained hitsies when somebody earned another stripe or full on promotion, or, or Officers' Candidate School hazing –”

“Which school you’ve never ever set foot in, Mr. Mustang, sir.”

"They make everybody take the same classes to give a feeling of community, that no penguin is above any other. Or to encourage humbleness, as you say. But they also do it so you won’t act like human secret agents do on television, don’t they –”

Johnson laughed at the mental image of himself as a human.

IOIOIOIOIO 

Skipper was gone, and the present was real.

Johnson had a nightmare. He didn’t dream in colors and light anymore, just black and shades of gray. The dreams varied from detailed and pleasant to just as detailed but strongly horrific.

Manfredi woke him by shaking him until he stilled. Then he turned in the willing embrace and put his head on Manfredi's chest. Manfredi's breathing deepened gradually as Manfredi fell back asleep, whatever remained of Johnson's internal clock telling him there was still time for that.

Johnson remained awake, listening and feeling him breathe. He felt a sudden and powerful rush of love and tears stung his eyes.

He wondered frantically if it were a brain fart that he was no longer Johnson, commando and wannabe officer, but Johnson, torture victim flailing to survive.

“Don’t hide from me. Don’t hide it. Don’t avoid it,” Manfredi whispered into Johnson’s earhole, not asleep after all.

Johnson shivered, but held him tighter.

Manfredi. He did love him, with desperate strength. He had always known he loved quickly, deeply, but always, always it had been tempered by duty, by her parents, by his wanderlust. And now, tempered by what?

Johnson wasn’t sure if he kissed Manfredi or Manfredi kissed him, but either way, both went at it like it was a race to see which could taste the other more, which could give into this wonderful feeling more completely. Manfredi was amazing beneath him, and the rake of his flippertips against his back made Johnson's whole body arch.

“I love you,” he told Manfredi, over and over, and Manfredi groaned it back, louder and louder until their pulses cooled.  
  



	22. Chapter 22

DAY 1599

Johnson wasn’t particularly padded, but neither was he. Nevertheless, sleeping on top of him was comfortable: his head on his keelbone, one leg thrown over his, his right flipper curving around him. He could feel Johnson's heartbeat. Thu-thump.

They both breathed slowly, easily. Afterwards, they had said nothing but held each other. Manfredi hadn’t expected that quietness, but it didn’t seem out of place.

He thought of Skipper. Naturally. If he tried hard enough, he could remember his commander's forthright touch in training and guiding, his rare smile. But with those wonderful memories, still treasured, came those others that he could not forget, and knew he shouldn’t wish to forget: the pain of wondering what might have been, of agonizing over what his next step ought to be, and the fear of rejection or, worse, shock and embarrassment. But his perception of those memories had changed over time, with new realizations and new truths learned even down here. He had made his choices, and he had had many; ultimately, he had made decisions that had separated him from his unit and his unit's commander. He didn’t think it had been intended or on purpose. He had always needed and loved the thought of love, but he had still made those choices and now new bonds had been formed.

Johnson. His gentleness, his spirit and his soul. His own pain, his own grief, but his own joys and happiness too.

“I love you,” Manfredi said, and he didn’t whisper, whimper, or groan it this time.

“I love you,” Manfredi said simply, breathing not altering a bit, and he had to laugh a little. He wondered if Johnson had been asleep, dozing, or faking it entirely. He decided it didn’t matter, and relaxed against the steady beat of Johnson's heart as he fell asleep.


	23. Chapter 23

DAY 1627

Manfredi never could quite control his breathing, so Johnson knew the exact moment he fell asleep.

Don’t hide it, Manfredi had told him. And he was right. He had misdirected his feelings long enough. If they could heal, if this could heal the two of them, that was more than enough reason to be open.

IOIOIOIOIO 

“Why do you think most TV shows have happy endings?”

“You know why.”

“I know I know why, I just wonder if you do.”

“Because most folks prefer happy endings,” Johnson said softly.

“Most?” Manfredi said with a laugh that he choked into a cough.

Johnson paused. “They prefer happy endings at all costs, I sometimes think, but life doesn't always give you happy endings, Private's Lunacorn shows aside.”

“Good tales do,” Manfredi murmured. He was curled against him, one flipper cupped around the knob of Johnson's shoulder and his head resting on it. His other flipper lay on Johnson's thigh. “Good tales do that.”

Johnson smiled. “That’s why commando warrant officers and hey, commissioned officers, too, squawk a lot of stories where everyone dies at the end, but peace and order and safety live on because of the sacrifice of non-com penguins like us.”

“Well, then, other sorts of officers can be morbid. Don’t they have happy endings sometimes?”

“Sure, bub. Think hard and you'll remember what our instructors used to blab to us as rookies, like they thought we never heard stories like that before, when we weren't in the service. Like there isn't life worth living outside the service.”

If Johnson didn't know better, he'd swear that Manfredi was younger than he actually was. “Are we learning from our tales that we tell each other?”

That we speak in our stories of our past, our discussions of how we'll get our warrant officer rank back, of how I learn every day how much I love you ... “Yes. I think we are.”

IOIOIOIOIO 

"What is a soul?”

Blink. There was no light, but to blink – instinct? Nervousness? Who knew? “I don’t think it’s supposed to be describable.”

“Something more, I think.” You have a beautiful soul.

“More than personality – more than reacting a certain way to a situation, more than liking malted milk balls.” You have a beautiful soul, that will never change.

“Can you see a soul?” You have a beautiful soul that will never change, and I see it through the veil of mine.

“How then do we birds know love?”

“That’s about as indescribable as a soul. Rack time now.”

"Mood buster."

"You've exhausted me in more ways than one, Manfredi."


	24. Chapter 24

DAY 1661

Despite the darkness, Manfredi had dreamy days where he could find himself lost in love and exuberance of a new way to look at life, and he would smile the whole day through. Young love, he would have said, except they neared middle age and this was so hard-won. Along with the giddy happiness came the gritty reality of trust. That, too, made him see the difference between fun and fulfilling events in life more clearly; once upon a time, he'd thought happenings were one or the other, rarely both. Now so many things were both fun and fulfilling _rat a tat tat_ one after the other, sometimes three in one day. 

It was on one of these superheated days that he feared he had gone too far.

He steered Johnson to his lap. "Were you hurt?" he asked as Johnson settled himself.

"No." Johnson twisted until he had his flipper around Manfredi's neck. Johnson squirmed a little like he did in the uncomfortable first days of moulting and Manfredi rubbed Johnson's knee, feeling as if he were floundering in the Pacific Ocean prior to drowning. It was a fate he used to consider plausible for himself.

Johnson took the lead unexpectedly. "We've never done that before."

"Righto, old bean. Gobsmackin', innit?"

"Stop channeling Private. It doesn't suit you."

"He was --- _is_ \--- cute."

"Skipper said you were cute, too."

Manfredi twitched. "Yeah, okay, I'm just going to come right out and say it. If I hurt you, I didn't mean to and I'm sorry. Let me make it up --- "

"I already said I'm unhurt."

A stasis and an uncomfortable one, at that. Manfredi felt compelled to block further conversation because he sensed talk wasn't the way to handle this. He stroked the feathers on Johnson's shin and discovered them standing up as if Johnson were chilled. He pressed them down.

Johnson sat like a blob on Manfredi's knee, neither talking nor moving as the feathers popped up again following the gentle stroke of Manfredi's flipper. After a while, Manfredi stopped petting and Johnson got up to head for bed, although the routine said otherwise.

Manfredi adjusted his sights lower for next time, because some experiences were too intense to bear repeating or talking about.  
  



	25. Chapter 25

DAY 1720 

“You’ll never leave me, will you?” Habit.

“Absolutely not.” And not so much habit. He'd never said this to anyone, neither to the delightful ladies who had asked the same question nor to his parents when they got a little clingy.

IOIOIOIOIO 

“This is serious.”

“Is not.”

“Is too.”

“Reverting to childhood, Johnson?” Manfredi questioned.

“You started it,” Johnson said, aware that this, too, sounded childish.

“Well, I agree,” Manfredi said lightly, but with an admission. “It is serious.”

“Of course you agree.” Still amused.

“Of course.”

Another silence, though this one was less heavy. There had been a few already, with them not quite getting to where they had agreed they should be.

“They’re just games,” Manfredi offered at last, beginning again.

“In the sense that we play them, they are more than games.”

“But is that so bad?”

“It is when we lose ourselves in them,” Johnson said.

Manfredi breathed in deeply for a reply, but then let it out, still quiet.

IOIOIOIOIO 

“What do you mean, you didn’t know your life would be like this? Couldn’t you have guessed in some way?” Manfredi asked, turning around to face Johnson, cuddling around him.

“No, I didn’t. How could I?” Johnson asked.

“Well, you knew you wanted to be a commando, didn’t you?” Manfredi insisted. “At least that was a constant.”

“Not really,” Johnson disagreed. “So much of life is in those around you. I never knew I would get so hepped up on the service. I certainly didn’t know about liking our last, er, our current, team so much.” He paused. “Or you.”

Manfredi sighed. “I suppose that’s true.”

“You knew you would be a commando – but I’m real certain you didn’t think that you would wind up a warrant officer until The Incident,” Johnson pointed out.

Manfredi smiled. “True.” He was silent for a few moments. “I suppose I – it seemed right to the higher ups to bust our ranks, the way The Incident happened. Most of the time. I never thought of the differences between then and now.”

Johnson felt his nod.

“I guess we don’t have control in the way we think we do,” Manfredi finished softly.

“No,” Johnson agreed. “But we have control over how we swim through rough tides, which is where it all really lies.”

Manfredi lifted his head from Johnson’s chest and Johnson felt his gaze upon him. Is that not what we do here? Johnson thought. “Hmm,” was all Manfredi said, but Johnson knew Manfredi understood anyway.  
  



	26. Chapter 26

DAY 1776 

Just like when itchy tail feathers signaled the beginning of moulting, an itch flared inside Johnson for a cleansing discussion over The Incident. He told himself that he needed to direct his dreams to relive it so he could freshen his memory. That was not something he looked forward to, exactly, but it needed to be done. He hoped Manfredi felt the same way, or would, in time.

Right before he dropped off to sleep tucked around Manfredi like good Norwegian black bread snugging a slab of sylte a la open sandwich style, he remained unsure if he spoke aloud or simply thought Manfredi's name as slumber claimed him.

"Manfredi!"

The dream began the usual way and an onlooker in his mind would have seen Johnson determined, not full of himself exactly but not far off. Johnson's voice carried in the echoing stairwell more than he wanted it to; he bit off his curse so hard the backlash burned his tongue.

"Manfredi, stat!"

Manfredi crawled on his belly across the fifteenth floor mezzanine and joined his buddy. "I stashed my 'chute on the roof, why didn't you? What happened?"

"Aw, I didn't want to lose sight when the lead _rævhål_ skedaddled too far ahead with his unholy trio. The crumb bums rappelled as far as the third floor," Johnson ground out, "but they got tangled in the holiday banner, see?" He pointed to the railing twenty-five feet across the stairwell where a line secured there and snaked down. Manfredi wiggled forward to peek over the edge, nodded, and wiggled back.

"We got no rappelling gear, Johnson. Let's me and you charge down the stairs while they're getting unstuck. I'll take point." Manfredi made to suit action to words until Johnson tugged his flipper.

"I got a better idea."

"Let's hear it, 'cause the elevator is eighty-sixed and time's a'wastin,' Bubba Ray Billy Bob."

"Tandem parachuting!" Johnson waggled his shoulders where the pack containing his parachute bulked up his ripped musculature even more.

"Wha?"

Johnson warmed to his cause. "Easy peasy, mac and cheesey. I drop over the side cuddling you close like I'm your sweetie, then I pull the ripcord, see, and we mushroom downwards. Now my legs lock onto yours the way we drilled in training, I guide us between the railing and the nutsos, get it? We slip past the crazies who don't know we'd do something that badass, see? Now I'm grabbing you and, and steering, and you get all the glory because when we pass the perps, you shuriken their rappelling lines. They're gobsmacked, as Private would say, they fall to the lobby and flop like a fish as Sponge Bob would say, we float down like lil angels like _I_ say, to mop 'em up while they're dazed." All this time talking, Johnson had been adjusting his parachute, working his neck, pumping a fist in early triumph as he steamrolled his companion of more years than he wanted to count.

Manfredi wriggled to the lip of the mezzanine again, looked up at the six floors above them and then down to the bad guys still snarled in the holiday string of lights twelve floors below. Raw curses echoing up the stairwell told the two warrant officers that the baddies didn't suspect they had been followed, much less faced danger of being caught. Holiday time brought deserted buildings nicely lit up, well, nice for the good guys, that is. Good guys who _weren't_ penguin commandos looking to be covert.

"I dunno, man. I dunno. The drop is pretty short for a 'chute, ain't it? And the 'chute will fill the stairwell side to side, won't it? What if it gets snagged on something and we get strung up high like holiday lights ourselves? They'll spot us and we'll be sitting ducks! Sitting penguins! Oh you know what I mean."

Johnson paused his jump prep. "Are you saying you don't trust me? After all we've been through together, Nicaragua, the Philippines, France, China, you don't trust me? I'm hurt, Manfredi. You cut me deep."

Manfredi winced. "It's okay to express an opinion, sheesh."

"And you did. It's noted and logged. Now let's jump. Come here for a hug, you nut."

"Let me get my shurikens out. There. Okay, engage hug. Remember I'm ticklish."

"How could I forget our partners limbo dance contest fiasco last New Year's Eve?"

Up onto the railing they balanced, Johnson's left flipper snugging Manfredi's spine to him and his right flipper at the ripcord. He whispered, "Geronimo," in Manfredi's earhole and threw himself backwards. As they cleared the balcony, he hooked his legs inside Manfredi's per protocol, ankle to ankle with Johnson's toes pointed outward to lock position. He pulled the ripcord.

Uh oh. There was no _snap pwwwshp_ when the 'chute deployed but a _hrmsplp_ , which meant it didn't deploy correctly. A tangled mess sprouted like a head of creamy fårikål cabbage that Johnson could see out of the corner of his eye. Oh well, he knew backup procedure as training protocol demanded. He had to give Manfredi credit, his buddy didn't let out a penguin peep as Johnson squeezed him harder and with both flippers. Johnson spreadeagled himself but only his legs assumed proper position because he had to hold Manfredi tight; there was no option on this. They'd break their necks together or get moderately injured together. Given their aerodynamics, their spread legs but tightly compressed flippers tilted them headfirst towards the lobby floor, which looked to be granite. Marble, maybe? 

He felt rather than heard Manfredi's _huh?_ as he whispered into the earhole of the one penguin he trusted above all others in a sitch like this one. "Reach around to deploy backup 'chute, on my mark."

An economic nod.

"Mark."

Manfredi didn't drop the shurikens, oh no, not that professional. He transferred both of them to his left flipper, reached around to the breakaway handle and yanked. The handle came off as Manfredi pulled it without hesitation, and the main chute fell away. Aw snap, now Manfredi had to transfer the shurikens to his right flipper so he could reach the reserve ripcord and wasn't the high gloss of the floor approaching faster than it ought to? 

Johnson gave up the notion of resuming his one-flipper hold on Manfredi and concentrated on holding him tightly with both flippers in their headlong descent. He used body language best he could to guide their fall straight downward.

Manfredi pulled the reserve ripcord, they heard a satisfying _snap pwwwshp_ , and the backup 'chute bloomed up and out like Manfredi's favorite flower, the lily of the valley.

Down they floated and oh yeah, this worked perfectly! _Skål_ , teamwork! In his dream, Johnson smiled and knew that he had smiled outside of his dream. It was weird, but he let it pass.

Onward they dropped, Johnson unable to tug the control lines although his body English steered well enough. Yes, the 'chute did nearly reach the sides of the stairwell, but enough leeway remained to maneuver for an experienced soldier such as Johnson. Manfredi tensed in his grip, silly bird! Everything was under con---

Uh oh. 

They neared the third floor where silence prevailed from struggling baddies, who seemed thunderstruck to see parachuting fellow penguins on the side of the angels drifting to them. Manfredi aced his assignment: he snapped one shuriken sideways to slice their rappelling line and the next cut the holiday lights string so that the two groups fell in one great glob to the lobby floor.

The danger-sparked sense of slow motion prevailed and Johnson perceived through the flash of red and green lights popping one by one that a baddie grabbed for Manfredi. The bird wanted, no doubt, to seize him to slow his fall. 

Nuh uh. 

No way.

Johnson wouldn't have Manfredi touched by any bad guy because Manfredi was _his_. He kicked outwards to the villain's beak, hearing a crack at the connect. He caught sight of the bird's eyes crossing while the unsupported feathery body dropped to the hard floor.

Then time resumed normal passing and everything happened at once: he got his and Manfredi's feet underneath them for a textbook landing, the baddies moaned and groaned after their fall, the 'chute settled on both groups of penguins, and the front door opened as the Big Boss charged in at the head of her picked troops. Although he couldn't see them, Johnson recalled their names as some pals of his and the memory burned with embarrassment as if it had just now happened. The dream played mercilessly onward with the grueling auditory part.

"I thought you'd need backup, you --- you --- what in the _sweet_ seven seas did you two think you were doing?" she barked as she must have signaled silently to her troops. Johnson heard twelve penguin feet surround the 'chute quickly and another pair of feet approached with the measured tread of authority. Suddenly he didn't want to come out from under its silky haven, but it was not to be. The footsteps halted and worn flippers lifted the 'chute directly in front of the two of them.

Johnson and Manfredi saluted.

Johnson ended the dream with a groan, unwilling to witness their hearing, punishment of a week in the brig, and revoking of their warrant. 

No longer officers except non-commissioned. 

Humiliated in front of the service, the Big Boss, and his pals. 

Dissing of his tactic. 

Coercion of a fellow soldier to partake in an unsafe procedure. Yeah yeah, Manfredi stood up for him and told the story to the Big Boss to put Johnson in a good light, but her decision stood.

When Manfredi woke up, Johnson was unprepared for the fallout of a quite reasonable request to lay The Incident to rest by dissecting it, decision by decision.

"Whatever made you think I'd want to relive it? We survived it and we've survived this black torture for years, but could you leave the past alone? Oh _nooooo_. Oh no, you had to bring it up --- " and then Johnson couldn't help himself: for the sake of his own honor, he had to defend his part in their decisions made within the span of ten minutes, Incident time. 

He never knew the cell could echo so much.


	27. Chapter 27

DAY 1776.5

The argument still raged half an hour later.

“I hate you sometimes, you know that?” Manfredi screamed at Johnson from as far away as he could get from him, unable to quite leave off _sometimes_. He hated being in here, everything compressing him, holding him down. He hated the darkness.

“So well put, Manfredi, and the same to you – ” Yes, Johnson could be vicious when he wanted to be.

“Skipper hurt me like this,” Manfredi snarled hoarsely. "He hurt me this bad by being so damned perfect, so damned confident."

“Can you figure out the difference?” Johnson demanded, voice clear, apparently unaffected by Manfredi’s confession. Hearing the shouted words made tears sting in Manfredi's own eyes once they broke forth into the dank air because Johnson said them to wound and Manfredi realized it. “I’m still here!" 

Manfredi knew it was important to Johnson to have the last say in this. Johnson must have thought the shout was the perfect thing to end the fight, and you know, he was right.

It took the loss of two days of them not speaking to each other, as they individually figured the time in their own minds, for them to resume sleeping within flippers' touch and longer than that to let down barriers even more.

IOIOIOIOIO 

"I know," Manfredi said and wondered if Johnson could hear the whine sharpening his voice. "I --- you're --- ready now --- "

"Here, I'm right here," Johnson said, one flippertip skirting around Manfredi's waist, the other rubbing ovals over his belly. "Manfredi. Do you --- that is, are you --- " He drew in a rough breath, his chest pressing against Manfredi's back. "Is --- "

Johnson always had to be certain. The first time through the most recent, he had to know if Manfredi liked this, wanted this, if this were all right.

Manfredi covered both of Johnson's flippers with his own and sang a Joplin song he'd been mentally rehearsing to surprise Johnson with on what they both calculated to be Thanksgiving in a week or so. Now was as good a time as any and better than most to let it out. He lolled his head backwards on Johnson's shoulder and sang, "I call you my lover, I call you my man, I said I call you my lover, do the best I can --- "

" _Du er veldig snill,_ " Johnson choked out, "but is it all right, tell me --- "

"You're my best friend, Johnson. I'm always sure with you."

Johnson made a sound deep in his throat that might have been a laugh or choked off gasp as Manfredi wriggled his tail against him. He reached around as usual and murmured, _"Mange takk_ ," into Manfredi's earhole as his hips bucked and then, later, " _nøkken_."

" _Sei davvero bravo_ ," Manfredi replied then, and neither he nor Johnson ever explained the terms.

IOIOIOIOIO

Johnson slept, and Manfredi drew a light touch across his face, his closed eyes, over his smooth brow and down the side of his face to the corner of his beak. He slept through it all; Johnson, who was always aware of what was going on around him. Especially here when they were like this, Manfredi supposed, as Johnson often was to fill the aching void. Manfredi felt a little embarrassed at how much he had missed Johnson in their two day standoff. He hadn't even missed Juanita as much as he missed Johnson.

Closing his eyes, Manfredi's flipper went down his chin, caressing his neck, to the hollow beneath his collarbone. 

“Johnson?” Manfredi breathed into his earhole.

“Hmm?” Johnson murmured, still mostly asleep.

“Wake up.”

Johnson woke up and smiled into Manfredi's touch at the corner of his beak before the touch wandered lower. 

IOIOIOIOIO

“It’s not a struggle anymore. I think that’s it,” Johnson said softly. “The routine, the games, they were all a struggle.”

“But it hurts,” Manfredi whispered.

“I know.”

Manfredi breathed deeply. “The loneliness – even with you here, always – the frustration of not being able to do nothing, the time lost, eh, okay, spent, since you insist time can only be spent and not lost. It all hurts. But ignoring it, avoiding it –” he stopped, unable to continue, knowing it didn’t matter because Johnson already knew.

“Acceptance doesn’t make the pain disappear, it helps us to deal with it,” Johnson agreed.

Manfredi sighed at hearing and believing it. "Yes.”  
  



	28. Chapter 28

DAY 1820

It was possible to run to keep in condition. You could work up to a slow jog before you hit the wall. If you ran in a circle, you could even get to a faster jog. Probably non-commando penguins couldn't manage it without smacking themselves silly, and the two of them got a little skip in their step at the thought of their superior training and experience.

Manfredi was breathless. “How are you still in so much better shape?” he gasped, dodging from Johnson’s quick grabs as they wrestled afterwards, hearing him and reacting by moving away.

“Just saying, exercises are designed – ” Johnson began.

“Then why can’t I – ” A flipper touched Manfredi's wrist, and he yelped.

Johnson made a satisfied noise, and even as Manfredi jerked back, an embrace claimed him. “I win,” Johnson said smugly right before smearing a kiss over Manfredi's face to shut him up.  
  



	29. Chapter 29

DAY 1832

The way Manfredi loved Johnson, he made Johnson's tears seem beautiful.

Like Johnson's tears were simply another part of him, and Manfredi loved all of him. When Johnson cried it was never easy or pretty, but that didn’t matter, just like it didn’t matter how filthy they were here. It was as if such things were tidal bubbles in the sand, gone as soon as you heard them pop. He hadn't a claim to Johnson's superior sense of penguin direction finding, but after so long a time as each other's polestars, he sensed a predictability to the meltdowns. This time, he hadn't been taken off guard.

How could he not love Johnson? It was not possible. And he wouldn’t wish it to be.

“Are you all right?” Manfredi murmured into Johnson's earhole.

Johnson just nodded.

Manfredi tightened his embrace briefly, then relaxed. “I love it when you let me hold you like this,” he whispered. "It makes me want to give you flowers, like, like lilies of the valley. Don't laugh."

Johnson exhaled and kissed him before leading him to the sort of dance that was just like everything else they did. They did it together, towards the twin goals of a healthy body and a clear mind. One of the things they didn't tell each other in talk time was that it felt even better than their tai chi and bench pressing each other over their heads to make sure they hadn't lost their physical conditioning, or that it surpassed even the crude fun of wrestling.  
  



	30. Chapter 30

DAY 1849

When Johnson attempted to activate his direction finding – active escape, that’s what he called it – he would often hold Manfredi. He would let his mind drift, thoughts coming to a standstill, yet complete awareness remaining. Everything stopped in those moments, and the world was vast and beautiful, not at all alone or beyond reach. Now and again he thought he got a sense of where they were imprisoned, and he brushed it away as imagination every time. 

That, he thought, was what the direction finding felt like, here, because he always felt directed to Manfredi. Maybe someday he'd discuss this with Kowalski but until then, this was his conclusion.


	31. Chapter 31

DAY 1900 

They didn't notice the weather down here unless, Manfredi supposed, it was either one of the solstices up top; then perhaps a degree of change could be felt in the air and in the water temperature filling their cup. He felt chilled as he tucked himself against Johnson's side, so it was sometime near winter.

"Can't sleep?" Johnson asked softly.

Manfredi opened his eyes. Johnson was his, his --- well, beyond all that, he could tell him anything. "Nope," he admitted.

Johnson turned on his side, his grip squeezing through feather and top layer of muscle to the tenderer layers beneath. Nightmares came occasionally still and they'd developed the habit of backrubs for comfort. Johnson rubbed Manfredi's lower back now.

"Mmmm," Manfredi breathed. "Thanks."

"My pleasure." Johnson's touch was gentle and very warm on Manfredi's spine, but the comfort ran only to the down layer of his feathery coat.

Manfredi snuggled closer, face against Johnson's chest. He opened his beak to sigh and then pressed the beaktip against Johnson's collarbone before a sly lick.

Johnson's flipper stilled, resting in the tail area, before taking up again its slow, even circles.

Their relationship didn’t really change. That was the odd thing.

From day to day how they expressed their love changed – from laughter and patience, to caring and concern. Little things, in the games they played, the things they talked about, those all changed because they were shaded by their love.

But Manfredi was just as dedicated to Johnson as in the beginning, five years ago. His feelings for him, born of that dedication, that caring, that connection, didn’t change. And despite everything, this was new and old to him. His love for his parents and theirs for him had never really changed at its core, yet his love had in other relationships, less stable ones.

Manfredi smiled. A hint, perhaps, of what this was? 


	32. Chapter 32

DAY 1953 

Johnson bit the back of Manfredi's neck and pushed twice more into the slot between his legs. Nearly _into_ him, if such a thing was possible, and the sudden, hot spill of Manfredi's pleasure made Johnson moan as it launched his own, second release.

They couldn’t see each other’s expressions. Much of the normal clues for pleasure disappeared years ago, except for when they were close enough to touch, to feel every twitch, tense, and slumping release. When he thought of what Manfredi looked like, he had this image of him in his mind where he was not quite smiling, not frowning, but just peaceful and relaxed, with focused eyes.

“It’s a crazy place that we live in,” Manfredi said suddenly. He scooted apart from Johnson, not touching, but still pretty close by. “Don’t you think?” he paused. “I don’t mean insane. Just ---” he laughed.

Johnson smiled at the laughter. “I know what you mean.”

As suddenly as that topic arose, Manfredi shifted. “You were telling me about that --- thing --- they have in Atlantis. You know what I mean,” he said, and Johnson remained pleased that Manfredi seemed unable to find the word but was confident anyway that Johnson would understand.

Johnson laughed. It was so easy to laugh now. “Yes,” he said simply. “Want me to start where I left off in the story last time?”

IOIOIOIOIO 

Johnson kissed Manfredi as if Manfredi were his sister and then more deeply.

“I love you,” he sighed into his neck.

“Hmmm,” was Manfredi’s response, too steeped in giddy contentment to reply properly or so it felt to Johnson. These moments were rarer, but no weaker. It carried over some, too, into the rest of the time. "I feel like smoking a Chesterfield now. Do you?"

“Is that all you have to tell me?” Johnson asked, sounding amused.

“Hmm,” Manfredi said again, then began to laugh.

Johnson reverted to saying to Manfredi what he had said when he had first met him in the Dar-es-Salaam bar brawl; in fact, it was the first thing he'd said to the bird outside of "Get him!" and "Watch out! He's got a shank!"

_"Vi hadde det skikkelig moro."_

_"Ja,_ " said Manfredi. "We did, bro."

Johnson nibbled the back of Manfredi's neck, one flipper rubbing up and down the sinew of Manfredi's left thigh. If their positions had been different, this would have resembled Johnson's careful checking of Manfredi's injuries after a particularly bad fight in the before time.  
  



	33. Chapter 33

DAY 1961

Breathe deeply.

That was Johnson’s advice; had been for quite some time. It sounded completely dull, but it worked. Deep breaths calmed the heart rate, soothed the mind. When the darkness became pressing, that’s what Manfredi would do – breathe deeply. He didn’t close his eyes. He calmed himself, deliberately. He didn’t run.

“So – yes. I got iced up in my own family ice cave because I sneaked into it when everybody was out looking for me and I breathed hard and the temp fell so my breath turned to blue ice that hardened to block the entrance,” Manfredi finished, with a sigh. "I guess I had the wanderlust bad even way back then. Blue ice was kinda pretty, as I remember, but I got scared around the edges and felt trapped inside my own home. Dumb enough kid to believe I couldn't ever die, you know?"

Johnson made an amused noise. “That’s some accomplishment, _bror_. How long did it take before you were found?”

Manfredi shrugged, the movement more difficult with Johnson wrapped around him. “A few hours. It seemed like longer, though. And afterwards, Papa stayed with me a few times and Mama packed snow around us, just to see that I wasn’t scared of it and to be there if I was.” He smiled. “Mama thought being trapped in the ice cave was enough punishment for running away. She had that gift.”

“What about your sister?”

Manfredi sighed dramatically. “Now, teasing from Sis was bad.”

Johnson laughed.

“Your turn,” Manfredi said lightly, stroking the flipper that lay on his stomach. “Were you ever locked in the dark?”

“A few times when I was a rookie. Sarge was a demon for throwing sitches like that at us --- ”

"Yeah, he was but I didn't think he'd --- "

"Well you didn't know him right from the beginning --- "

"I did not as you did but now I'm hella glad I didn't --- "

"You oughta be pleased as punch, you really ought --- "

And so the talk time passed with them finishing each other's sentences until gradually eyelids grew heavy.

IOIOIOIOIO

Manfredi had forgotten this, and he wasn’t entirely sure Johnson had ever known it. The way afterwards peace and total relaxation would settle down, leaving an emotional high of bliss.

Johnson went after things with single-minded determination and fascination. He traced Manfredi's every feature like he was memorizing it, slow and gentle, slow and gentle. He took his time until Manfredi was impatient with frustration. On the other hand, he was learning about Johnson, too. This touch and that touch, and more than that, this slowness here and this word there.

And he would respond, and it was just startling and so _musciad_ good.

IOIOIOIOIO

Manfredi smiled and leaned back against Johnson. He felt Johnson kiss the top of his head. There was a new level to all their goings on, a new closeness – even here, where there was no privacy to be had. Everything was new in seeing it this way, in this perspective. He couldn't recall the last time he had felt bored.

“What do you want to do today?” Manfredi murmured.

He felt Johnson’s slight shrug. “Whatever you want.”

The routine was no longer everything.  
  



	34. Chapter 34

DAY 2190

Noise. Deep, aching noise.

They weren’t making it.

It reverberated against them, under their feet, they could feel it through the walls. It was noise from action, loud and unyielding. And then, the other sound, that deep groan, slow and then fast, then slow again, and the whole world was changing.

They couldn’t see it, there had been too much darkness, but there was light. Johnson whispered it first, Manfredi’s grip on him tight and painful. “The door is opening.”

The door is opening –

They would waddle out strong.

IOIOIOIOIO

The End.

IOIOIOIOIO


End file.
